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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635732">late night devil (put your hands on me)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorninglou/pseuds/goodmorninglou'>goodmorninglou</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Direction (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Dom/sub Undertones, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Louis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:13:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635732</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorninglou/pseuds/goodmorninglou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Styles has always put up with him. With every snip of attitude, every idiotic act of stubbornness, every harsh and sour word. Each time Louis thinks he's stepped too far, clung too tight, bitten too hard, Harry is there to forgive him, to protect him, to hold him. Maybe he was naive to think that, no matter how hard he pushed, Harry would never move.</p><p>Maybe he should have seen it coming.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik/Liam Payne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>716</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Act I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>sooooo this is the thing that has consumed me and stolen me away from take my whole life too for the past 3 (?) months !! i'm sorry !! but only a little !!<br/>I AM NOT AUTHORIZING TRANSLATIONS OR REPOSTS AT THIS TIME. seriously y’all, unfortunately ive had some problems with translations and with reposting and it’s frustrating and stuff so sorry but please don’t ask, please don’t translate and please don’t repost. all my love &lt;333<br/>title from teeth by 5sos<br/>anyway, hope you enjoy ! part two will be out sunday evening !!<br/>&lt;333</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>An hour and six minutes before they have to go on stage, Harry pins him to the wall and presses his entire face into Louis’ neck, inhaling deep and slow, hands gripping at his body like Louis would turn to mist if he didn’t hold tight enough. Like he’d evanesce out of existence. In a hotel mirror that night, Louis will count the yellowish-blue circles that ring his hips, four in the meat of his muscle, one in the hollow of his hipbone, mirrored on each side, ten in all. The shape of Harry’s fingertips will make his blood zing. But, when Harry presses him against the scratchy bricks, the marks he’ll leave Louis with when he lets go are the last things he’s thinking about.</p>
<p>     He slides his hands up Harry’s bowed back, sinking into the thick weight of his snarled curls. “Everything okay?” He whispers, lips gliding against the shell of Harry’s ear.</p>
<p>     “Missed the way you smelled.” Harry murmured against his pulse, lips drawing together to drop a delicate kiss against it.</p>
<p>     Louis giggled a little, drumming his fingertips down Harry’s spine through the white cotton of his shirt. Harry hummed in contented pleasure. “Is that why I’m pinned against the wall?” He asks, but he’s growing hard in his jeans, a furnace warming beneath his belly and shooting sparks through his worn veins.</p>
<p>     “I called your name.” Harry growled lowly, which is true. “You didn’t acknowledge me. Made me angry.”</p>
<p>     “Volatile alpha.” He says fondly, because he loves Harry and all of his stupid, possessive, caveman instincts.</p>
<p>     Harry palmed his ass, hands wide and red-hot. “Pretty omega.” He purred. His sharp teeth nipped at Louis’ pale neck, driving in, leaving ugly, crimson marks across the collar of his shirt. Louis loves those, too.</p>
<p>     He slapped at Harry’s shoulder. “Hands off the goods, Casanova.” Harry squeezed the flesh of his arse in rebellion. “You’ve gotta pay to play, you know that.”</p>
<p>     “Prostitution.”</p>
<p>     “Good business.” Louis countered. He stood on Harry’s toes, arcing up to tuck his chin over the crown of Harry’s head. His hands hadn’t loosened their bruising hold. Louis wouldn’t have had it any other way. “Do you know how many knotheads would pay to fuck a pretty omega like me?”</p>
<p>     It feels a bit like lightning, crackling through his veins, when Harry tears back to glower into Louis’ face, throat vibrating with a growl, lip pulled back over his bared canines. The emerald of his eyes were swallowed by onyx pupil. Louis tipped back against the jagged bricks, skin licked with heat, slick wetting his briefs. The whine that escapes his mouth is almost involuntary. Harry smells like anger, like a rainy forest sharpened by fire, wood cracking and popping beneath the flames. His hands slipped up to grip at the sides of Louis’ ribs.</p>
<p>     “<em>Omega</em>,” he rasps, when that seems like all he can muster, brows pulled together.</p>
<p>     Louis cupped the side of his face. “They don’t get to have me.” He whispered soothingly. “Come on, silly alpha, we have to go get ready.”</p>
<p>     It’s the soft look on Harry’s precious face that decimates the last of Louis’ resolve, the way his brows pull together, teeth tugging at his blushed lower lip. “Can I...” he starts, gazing into Louis’ delicate face.</p>
<p>     Louis nodded. “Mmhmm.”</p>
<p>     He closes his eyes as Harry scents him, neck bared to that pine tree and fresh bread scent. He won’t pretend he doesn’t love the way it mixes with his own. Harry’s hands smoothed up his spine, skimmed over his tummy, sweet and rough, as his head tucked into Louis’ neck, nose against his scent gland. He rubbed his cheek against it. So alpha. So kind.</p>
<p>     Harry held him for an eternal second, arms wrapped around his waist, brow against his collarbone. He’s warm, firm, but his skin is soft and slides against Louis’ like water. If there’s anything that Louis can’t live without, it’s this. Harry holding him. Mixing their scents until they whorl together, a storm of pine needles and orange blossoms, of cold water and bread and vanilla, except it’s not a storm, not at all. Storms entail fury, and there’s none of it in the inches between them. Just cherry-sweet affinity.</p>
<p>     “You smell good today.” Harry breathed against the top of his chest, bottom lip scraping the collar of his cotton tee. “Better than normal.”</p>
<p>     Louis bumped their brows together. “Thanks, princess.” He needled.</p>
<p>     Harry pinched the top of his thigh and darted forward to scrape his teeth across Louis’ earlobe. It drew a sharp gasp from his parted lips. “Brat.” Harry purred lowly.</p>
<p>     Louis lets Harry pin him to the bricks once more, face buried in his neck, hands held tight to his thighs.</p>
<p>     The boys rag on them for being late to the dressing room, but neither of them really care.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“There’s an alpha checking you out across the room.”</p>
<p>     Louis snorted as Zayn looped a thin arm around his waist, curling his lips around his straw, prodding at the end with the tip of his tongue. There <em> is </em>an alpha looking at him, dark-eyed and handsome, chest turned halfway towards the dance floor like he’d been in the midst of walking to it when he’d set eyes on Louis and frozen in his shoes. Louis isn’t surprised, really. He’s been known to stun many an alpha on a night out.</p>
<p>     He grinned absently as the club lights flashed green. “He looks like a Patrick, and you know I don’t trust Patricks.”</p>
<p>     Somewhere in the haze of bodies and music, Harry was dancing, but Louis couldn’t see him.</p>
<p>     Zayn grumbled, a frustrated sound that middled between amused and annoyed. “It was one time, two years ago.”</p>
<p>     “You said he was checking me out!” Louis countered, twisting to slap Zayn’s shoulder. “I felt like a fool!”</p>
<p>     Zayn just rolled his amber eyes, lashes fanning obscenely long against his green-cast cheekbones. He drove a finger into Louis’ side. “He doesn’t even look like a Patrick, not really. He’s... a Luke.”</p>
<p>     “Patrick Luke.” Louis settled, sipping at his drink. </p>
<p>     “Stop drinking a daiquiri with a straw.” Zayn scolded, shaking his head. “You look like a toddler.”</p>
<p>     “Leave me alone.” He wrapped his lips protectively around the straw, pouting, rubbing at his nose. Zayn smelled like smoke and passion fruit, like wild and delicate omega. Louis wondered if that’s what people thought when they smelled him. “How do you know he’s an alpha?”</p>
<p>     “I can smell him.” Zayn cast him a bizarre glance from the corner of his eye. “Can’t you? He’s the strongest smelling alpha in here.”</p>
<p>     In very plain terms, the only alpha Louis can smell is Harry. He scented Louis before they left, under the sheer guise of concealing his scent from overbearing alphas, and it clung still to his clothes, his hair, the corners of his mouth. Like static to a rug.</p>
<p>     Louis just shrugged. “All I smell is booze.” He shifted, wincing when the bottom of his sneakers stuck to the sticky floor. “Do you wanna have a smoke?”</p>
<p>     Zayn slapped his arm. “Oh my god, shut up, he’s coming over.”</p>
<p>     Anxiety flashed through Louis’ veins, dizzying and hot. “If he’s coming to flirt with you instead of me I’m going to fucking kill—“ he hissed.</p>
<p>     Zayn pinched him until he shut up. Then he was gone. Louis had officially been abandoned.</p>
<p>     Patrick’s real name is Brandon. Louis doesn’t remember anything else from their conversation. Halfway through, Patrick/Brandon frowns, and says, in no uncertain terms: <em> sorry, you just smell like an alpha. </em></p>
<p>     Louis goes back to the hotel drunk and alone, without telling the other boys. Harry is ten minutes behind, tugging open the door without knocking, clambering into the bed and wrapping Louis up in his arms. His hold is tighter than it would’ve been if Louis hadn’t disappeared from the club. Neither of them care that Louis’ naked, and Harry strips down to his pants and curves their bodies together.</p>
<p>     “What’s your bank code?” Louis breathes against the warm skin of Harry’s collarbone, because he wants to hear Harry’s voice and he doesn’t know any other way to.</p>
<p>     “That’s never going to work.” He sounds tired, thick with exhaust and pale amusement. His hands feel like taffeta against Louis’ spine. “You smell different.”</p>
<p>     “I’m persuasive.” Louis murmured gently.  “An alpha tried to chat me up at the bar.” He didn’t like the weight of this duvet. It’s too heavy, too caging. With Harry beside him, he’s lying in the midst of a furnace, skin against the coals. He pushed the blanket off his shoulder and grumbled when Harry pulled it back up. “It’s too hot, I don’t want it on.”</p>
<p>     Harry smoothed a hand down his bicep. “You’re going to get cold in the middle of the night. I turned the air con up. If you get cold, you’ll wake up, and then you’ll burrow into me trying to get warm and you’ll wake me up, and I don’t want to be woken up.”</p>
<p>     Louis tipped his head up on the pillow to glare at Harry’s perfect, calm face. His eyes are shut, and Louis trails his fingertips over the violet eyelids, drifting featherlight across the thin skin, sweet as candy. Harry doesn’t even flinch.</p>
<p>     He has to take advantage of it.</p>
<p>     He poked Harry in the cheek, rough and sudden, right where the dimple would be if he were grinning. “Harry.” He says, and pokes again. “Hazza. Harry. Haz. Hazbear. Harry.” There’s no response. “Alpha.”</p>
<p>     Harry cracked one eye open.</p>
<p>     “I’m too warm.” Louis whispered, squirming, crown of his head bumping against Harry’s chin. The sheets are itchy on his skin, and he really <em> is </em>hot, sweat dusting the dimples of his spine and the base of his neck. “I’m not gonna get cold against your chest, Hazza, you’re like a radiator.”</p>
<p>     When he shoves the duvet off his shoulders once more, until it bunches up around the dip of his waist, Harry doesn’t pull it back up. He just rolls his closed eyes and pulls Louis a little closer.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis wakes up in the middle of the night, freezing. Harry shifts when he pulls the blanket over his shuddering body, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he tucks his sleepy face into the juncture of Louis’ neck and shoulder and presses a kiss there. They fall asleep like that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Stop judging me.”</p>
<p>     “I’m not judging you.”</p>
<p>     “Yes, you are, I can see it in your huge dog eyes.”</p>
<p>     Liam pouted, dark brows pulling together, pink lip jutted out. A tattooed hand brushed consciously beneath his under eye. “I just don’t understand why you’re doing it alone.”</p>
<p>     Louis tossed the water bottles he’d been carting to the bedside table onto the mattress, watching them bounce with far less satisfaction than he might’ve on any other day. The sunlight that streamed through the water cast strange patches of light against the sheets. “Liam, you’re an alpha.”</p>
<p>     Liam gave him a strange look. “Good on you for observing.”</p>
<p>     “So you don’t get it.” Louis huffed, flipping him off half heartedly. “I don’t want an alpha helping me through heat. I don’t like the idea of being around someone when I’m that out of control, and—not myself.” He shuddered at the thought. “Even if I did, there’s not an alpha I could think of that I’d trust or want to help me.” Which is a lie. He can think of one. “You’re not an omega, believe me, you just don’t get it.”</p>
<p>     Liam raked a hand through his hair. “It goes on longer if someone’s not helping, though, Lou.”</p>
<p>     Louis spun to glare daggers at his band mate. If looks could kill, Liam would be cold in the ground. Six feet under. “Sorry for the inconvenience, you fucking knothead.”</p>
<p>     “That wasn’t what I meant and you know it.” Liam growled, voice dipping low and gravelly. Louis bit back a whimper at the alpha timbre. “You’re in pain longer, and I don’t like thinking of you in pain.” He added, softer than before.</p>
<p>     Louis’ deflating, sinking onto the edge of the mattress. “There’s no one—“</p>
<p>     “That’s a lie.” Liam cut him off, shrugging at the naked truth even when Louis cringed from it. “I respect your decision because it’s not mine to make, and I respect that you don’t feel comfortable being so intimate with someone you aren’t bonded to, but don’t tell me there isn’t an alpha in this hotel that you wouldn’t want to help if you didn’t care about that.”</p>
<p>     Louis stared at his fingers. They wiggled and twiddled of their own accord. “He’s not in this hotel right now...” he mumbled finally, sickeningly weak-willed. “And none of it matters, because I <em> do </em>care about it, and I’m not going to ask Harry to help me.” He set the bottles on the overflowing bedside table, an inch shy of a slam.</p>
<p>     Liam stood and shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He murmured, mouth pulled to one side. “I’m going to get that granola from Paul, I’ll drop it back off in ten or so.” His hand was on the doorknob. “Just know that you don’t have to be scared to trust an alpha. Especially not the ones in this band.”</p>
<p>     Louis gnawed his lip silently and managed a limp wave when Liam walked out and shut the door softly behind him.</p>
<p>     Heat churned in his gut. He flopped back onto the mattress.</p>
<p>     It was going to be a long three days.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He remembers two things from his haze of heat and knot-lust: the way fire had licked through his veins, hardly dulled even when a knotted dildo was eight inches deep in him and he was coming all over the soiled sheets, and the way he’d cried Harry’s name, pleading and weak, eyes shut as his face pressed into the sweat-damp pillows.</p>
<p>     It’s the same as every other heat.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He limps down to breakfast when the blaze beneath his skin had finally gone out, leaving behind only the yearning desire for an alpha’s touch, and doesn’t even pretend to look at the buffet when he plants himself in Harry’s lap.</p>
<p>     Harry tucked his nose into the back of Louis’ head and inhaled deeply. He’s the only one in the dining area. If Louis knows Zayn, and he does, then he’s still sleeping, and Liam is watching him sleep with that stupidly reverent look on his face, and Niall ordered room service. It’s just them. Just Harry’s nose in his hair. Hands on his tummy.</p>
<p>     “All better?” Harry murmured, voice still rough with sleep.</p>
<p>     Louis burrowed further into it. “Need to be...” he circled Harry’s wrist with a dainty hand. His fingers barely touched. He doesn’t finish the sentence, just whispers, “Alpha.” and Harry’s taking him back up to the room, holding Louis against his chest by the thighs, nudging his nose against Louis’ scalp to inhale the sweet, lingering heat pheromones and then erase them with his own scent. Louis slung his arms around Harry’s neck and tried to convince himself he was only <em> letting </em>Harry carry him.</p>
<p>     Someone changed the sheets on Louis’ bed. The whole room still smells of heat, and Harry growls softly when he enters it before lying them both on the mattress, Louis pillowed on his chest, fingers raking through his locks.</p>
<p>     “What did you do while I was gone?” Louis asks. <em> Gone</em>. Like he’d darted out of town for three days on errand. Like he hadn’t been moaning Harry’s name into this same mattress and trying not to sob when he remembered he was three rooms away.</p>
<p>     The boys had always thought it was a good idea that there were two buffer rooms between Harry and Louis during heats and ruts. It’s just... safer.</p>
<p>     Harry traced the contours of Louis’ face, nails tracing the bow of his lips, knuckles running up and down his nose, fingertips curving along with the shape of his shut eyelid. It feels a bit like heaven, like floating in the sky with a cloud for a pillow, eyes pulled closed because it’s far more work to keep them open. It feels just like falling asleep even though he’s wide awake. Like all-consuming serenity. He’s the face of a windless lake. The last raindrop to fall at the end of a storm. He’s so safe.</p>
<p>     “Played FIFA with Niall.” Harry says. Louis had almost forgotten he’d asked a question. “Watched movies. Zayn and Liam got in a fight and made up within the hour. It was all very dramatic.”</p>
<p>     “What did they fight about?”</p>
<p>     “Omega rights.” Harry murmured, a little quieter, face reddening. “Liam thinks it’s dangerous that you spend heats alone, Zayn says he doesn’t get a say because he’s not an omega—“</p>
<p>     “Which he doesn’t.” Louis chimed, glowering weakly.</p>
<p>     “Which he doesn’t.” Harry agreed dutifully. “Anyway, Zayn tore into him for <em> ‘being a knothead alpha who thinks he has a say in issues that don’t involve him.</em>’ His words, not mine.”</p>
<p>     Louis bumped his brow against Harry’s chest. “Good for Zayn.” He lifted his head. “But they’re okay now?”</p>
<p>     Harry’s fingers brushed across his cheek, thumb swiping over the cliff of his cheekbone. “They’re okay now.” He assuaged.</p>
<p>     He set his ear over Harry’s pounding heart and shut his eyes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sometimes, when Louis’ alone, he makes a nest of his clothes and pretends he has an alpha.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis’ tucked himself into Niall’s side and stifled a sigh. Niall said nothing, just wrapped a pale arm around Louis’ demure shoulders and tugged him closer, eyes scarcely straying from the telly. Outside the tinted windows, the asphalt rushes past, dark trees no more than shadowed blurs at the roadside. The bus hums beneath them.</p>
<p>     “I hate bus nights.” Louis grumbled finally, shifting his cheek against the itchy fabric of Niall’s shirt. Sleep plucked arduously at his lavender eyelids. “Can’t sleep.”</p>
<p>     Niall hummed as sedative, beta pheromones began to roll off his skin, palm stroking gently up and down Louis’ bicep. Louis groaned thankfully and tucked his face into Niall’s neck. “You can sit out here and watch Peppa with me, if you want.” He offered sweetly.</p>
<p>     Louis snorted ungracefully. “Why are you watching Peppa Pig?”</p>
<p>     “Because it’s on.” He huffed, as though it were obvious, manifesting a handful of crisps from who-knows-where and shoving them in his mouth. “It’s a law to watch Peppa when it’s playing, you know that.”</p>
<p>     Louis nodded. “That I do.”</p>
<p>     He slung an arm over Niall’s chest and tipped his face towards the ceiling. There were no stars outside the windows. Just blurs of blackened sky. He hadn’t been able to see stars in Donny, either. He used to ask his mom where they’d gone. <em> They’re still there, boo</em>, she’d said gently, smoothing a hand over his soft hair. <em> Just because something is bright enough to cancel out dimmer lights, it doesn’t mean those lights go out</em>.</p>
<p>     Louis missed the stars.</p>
<p>     Peppa and her friends were playing pirates.</p>
<p>     When Louis glanced up, Zayn was in the doorway, rubbing at his dark-rimmed eyes with a sweater-hidden hand. Liam appeared behind him in half a moment, hands curling around his omega’s waist, chin on his shoulder.</p>
<p>     “What are you doing up?” Liam asked, pressing a kiss to the side of Zayn’s head.</p>
<p>     “Niall’s eating.” Louis supplied. “I can’t sleep.”</p>
<p>     Zayn slumped down on the other couch, mumbling something akin to <em> fucking Irishman, waking me up</em>. Liam was close behind, lying on top of him, squishing Zayn’s thin body beneath his own and grinning when Zayn giggled. He peppered kisses across his tanned face. Across his thin hands when he raised them to cover his blushing cheeks.</p>
<p>     It hurt Louis, to watch them. Like a hammer beneath his diaphragm, slamming into it, splintering his achy rib cage into jagged shards. It carves a cavity in his chest, heavy and hollow. Just beside his heart. They’re everything he doesn’t have. And he can’t even be angry at them for it.</p>
<p>     They whisper softly to each other, grinning against each other’s skin, and Louis trains his eyes on the telly so he won’t stare, pining over something he’s never had.</p>
<p>     “Thanks for inviting me to the party.” Harry grinned, manifesting at the door with sleepy eyes and a sleepier smile. He makes his way across the room and plops down beside Louis, jostling both he and Niall. He’s wearing only pajama pants and his bare skin, glowing softly beneath the dim LEDs, painted with tattoos that Louis knows with his eyes shut. Blind and silent, he could still trace them with his hands. Harry settled a broad hand on the inside of Louis’ thigh and dropped the other on his own stomach, just beneath the butterfly. His palm is almost scalding, and Louis melts beneath it, as he should. As he always would.</p>
<p>     Louis turned to him, smiling softly. He smells good. “If you consider Peppa Pig a party.”</p>
<p>     “Everyone considers Peppa a party.”</p>
<p>     A dry chuckle. Louis leaned into Harry’s side.</p>
<p>     It only took six minutes for him to fall asleep.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis raised a hand to stroke along Harry’s face, thumb pressing into the dip of his chin, fingers splayed across his sharp cheek.</p>
<p>     Harry shifted between his thighs. “My rut starts the day after tomorrow.”</p>
<p>     Louis’ hard in his pants, and when he shifts, he can feel Harry, too, firm against his thigh. It’s never mattered before, and it doesn’t now. “I remember.” He whispers. Sweet. Warm. Moonlight streamed through a gap in the curtains and slanted across Harry’s face.</p>
<p>     Louis hates to imagine what it would be like if he and Harry were together. It hurts to think of. If they stumbled into the colossal <em> More </em>that had been biting at their heels since they fell asleep together in the X Factor bunk beds. It looms over their shoulders like rain-heavy clouds, hanging low, dizzyingly overt. Louis can taste it when Harry’s skin presses against his own. Reddish-blue.</p>
<p>     Harry squeezed his face cheekily and giggled when Louis’ lips puckered. “What will you do without me to entertain you?”</p>
<p>     Fondness warped the disapproving frown that Louis tried to set on his mouth. “My life exists outside of you.” He brushed the pad of his pointer finger along the swollen swell of Harry’s bottom lip.</p>
<p>     He felt it when Harry smiled. “I know.”</p>
<p>     A sigh into the colored-navy air. “S’pose I’ll mope and eat the food you never let me eat when we’re together.”</p>
<p>     The frown came next. “You know that stuff is bad for you.” Harry scolded. His thighs were hot where Louis’ cradled them.</p>
<p>     Louis grinned, feeling his chest swarm with warmth. “It tastes so good though.” He licked his lips and moaned teasingly.</p>
<p>     Harry’s hips shifted, and Louis almost went catatonic with it, the swirl of warmth beneath his ribs blazing into an inferno, white-hot and soft-edged. He wants to turn his face into the pillow and hide there. He wants to spread his legs, strip himself naked, and present himself to Harry, wet and hard and confused. He wants too many different things he doesn’t know how to name.</p>
<p>     “Will I ever get you to eat a carrot?” Harry grumbled with mock annoyance.</p>
<p>     Louis pulled a face that made him giggle, even through the chiffon-soft darkness between them. “Blasphemy.” He deadpanned.</p>
<p>     Harry tipped down, elbows digging into the soft mattress beside Louis’ shoulders, and blew a raspberry into the side of his neck.</p>
<p>     Louis yelped, squirmed, trying desperately to dampen the giggles bubbling in his throat. “Get off, get off!” He squeals joyfully, pushing at Harry’s head. He writhes and twists and wriggles until he’s finally away from the feeling, jumping out from beneath Harry’s body and skewing atop the mattress until he’s seated on Harry’s hips.</p>
<p>     He loves straddling Harry. It makes him feel like he’s sitting on a throne. Like he’s right in the place where he belongs.</p>
<p>     Harry stares up at him reverently, grassy eyes glowing in the shadow. One of his hands squeezed Louis’ ample hip. The other is raised to stroke his first knuckle along his cheek. “Silly omega,” he purrs. Blood heats Louis’ face when their hard-ons brush together, and he knows Harry can feel it, blooming beneath his skin. “Silly, silly omega.”</p>
<p>     Louis fingers drifted down Harry’s bare chest and stilled on his taut stomach. “We should go to sleep.” He breathed out, just a shape of words across bitten lips.</p>
<p>     Harry nudged two fingers beneath Louis’ chin. “If you want.”</p>
<p>     Louis doesn’t know what he wants. He never has. Not with Harry. He can see it, just behind his eyelids when he closes them, mocking in their divinity; Harry, three fingers deep in his arse, curling fingertips ruthlessly against his prostate until Louis can’t even move, can’t even breathe. Until it hurts. He’d whisper in Louis’ ear about how much he wanted him, how good he was being, how beautiful he looked spread over Harry’s thighs, and Louis would fall to pieces from it. And then, it’s Harry, thrusting into him just the way he wants to, groaning at the gush of slick that leaks from Louis’ bum, drips onto the sweat-damp sheets. Hands gripping his hips to pull Louis back, to meet him, thrust-for-thrust. Knotting him so divinely that Louis’ crying for it. This is what Louis sees. But, it’s also this: Harry stroking his thumb over Louis’ knuckles while they walk through the grocery store. This: their socked feet bumping together in a lawless game of footsie, lying on opposite sides of the couch, legs intertwining in the middle. It’s this: Harry making them dinner and kissing Louis gently on the forehead, with no other intention than because he’d like to, and tucking them together in bed that night, kissing devoutly over the bond mark on Louis’ neck. This and this and this. He’s always seen it.</p>
<p>     He’s never known what he wants.</p>
<p>     So, he just nods, tipping forward onto Harry’s warm chest and letting Harry tuck the both of them together, soft and sweet beneath the blankets. In a foreign hotel room, Harry is the only facet of home that Louis’ ever kept. Ever known.</p>
<p>     Harry falls asleep quickly. Sleep grants no such pity for Louis, who lies awake, tracing circles and whorls and words on Harry’s spine, until he finally slips under as the first rays of dewy, pink-lilac sun lap at the horizon.</p>
<p>     He dreams of Harry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis can pretend otherwise, but he hates Harry’s ruts. It means that he can’t see Harry for four days, four <em> whole days</em>, sometimes five, and that’s probably illegal somewhere. A crime punishable by severe grumpiness and separation anxiety.</p>
<p>     Of course, his bed still smells like Harry. They’d spent a whole day and a night lying together in it, the day before Harry’s rut, playing FIFA and watching movies. Harry always got possessive of Louis around ruts. All five of them, to some degree, but Louis was the only one he needed to hold, to keep in his space, in his arms. He left a few jumpers and sweaters behind for Louis to cuddle into during their days apart.</p>
<p>     Which is exactly what he’s doing now.</p>
<p>     He was sprawled across his bed as Niall sat on the floor in front of it, both their gazes trained intensely on the game of FIFA that blurs across the telly. Harry’s lavender jumper hung loose across his collarbones, around his wrists, but he likes it that way. And it smells so strongly of him, pure alpha, forest and bread and freezing streams of water.</p>
<p>     “Niall,” Louis started, and cut himself off to cheer as he landed a goal. “Niall, what do I smell like?”</p>
<p>     “Uh...” Niall said dumbly, distracted as he maneuvered the ball down the field. “Orange blossoms and vanilla. You know that.”</p>
<p>     “Yeah, I know.” Louis pauses the game and Niall lets out a loud squawk of protest, spinning around to glare at Louis. “But do I ever smell like Harry?”</p>
<p>     Niall’s pale brows drew together. “Yeah, almost always a little. A lot in the mornings. He scents you everyday, of course you smell like him.” He rambles, as if it’s obvious, and it’s all so casual that Louis feels sick. Niall catches sight of his darkening face and frowns. “I mean, you don’t smell mated, if that’s what you’re asking.”</p>
<p>     “No, no,” Louis begins, shaking his head. He’s fully prepared to drop this conversation, except Niall looks both confused and suspicious, and he knows there’s no getting out of it. “I think—“</p>
<p>
  <em>      “Oh, fuck, Liam!” </em>
</p>
<p>     They both freeze. </p>
<p>     Their faces contort into something halfway between disgust and puzzlement, brows drawn together, mouths tugged into deep frowns. Niall took a breath like he was going to say something.</p>
<p>     The wall starts pounding, sharp and rhythmic.</p>
<p>
  <em>      “Fuck, yes, Liam, Liam—” </em>
</p>
<p>     “Oh my god!” Louis cries out, flushing red, voice strained in horror. He dropped his face into his hands as Niall gagged. “Oh my <em> god</em>, it’s two in the afternoon!”</p>
<p>
  <em>      “Yes, right there, fu-uck, I’m gonna—” </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>      “Come for me.” </em>
</p>
<p>     Louis screams. Niall snatches the garbage bin and dry heaves into it. In a panic, Louis chucks the hotel-provided Bible at the wall—something he’ll laugh hysterically about later—but the banging of the headboard doesn’t so much as falter. He can hear the mattress creaking, now.</p>
<p>     Niall chucks him his coat, already shrugging his own on, and they hightail out of the room. Halfway down the hallway, they’re giggling.</p>
<p>     By the time they’re in the elevator, they’re holding each other up through harsh wracks of laughter, wheezing for air, and Louis’ forgotten all about his scent.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“We could hear you and Liam fucking earlier.” Louis says casually when he and Zayn are watching some old superhero movie later that night.</p>
<p>     Zayn grinned and shifted like he was remembering it. “Did we sound hot?”</p>
<p>     “Niall dry heaved into the waste bin.”</p>
<p>     “Nice.”</p>
<p>     “Did you miss the part about the dry heaving?”</p>
<p>     “The hotter you sound, the grosser it is to your mates, Lou, you should know that.”</p>
<p>     Louis stared at him incredulously. “I will never figure you out.”</p>
<p>     Zayn grinned and took a handful of pretzels, tattoos shifting over his knobby knuckles. “You’d understand if you got knotted more often.”</p>
<p>     Louis gaped. “Hey!” He grabbed a pillow and slapped it against Zayn’s shoulder. “Don’t be mean!”</p>
<p>     “I’m not being mean, I’m being honest. You haven’t hooked up with anyone on this tour yet, is all I’m saying.” He leaned his head on Louis’ shoulder and poked his lower lip out. “I swear I’m not trying to piss you off, I just thought you would’ve.”</p>
<p>     Louis said nothing.</p>
<p>     Zayn didn’t give up so easily.</p>
<p>     “So,” he smirked. “It’s Harry, right?”</p>
<p>     He only shut up when Louis smacked him in the face with a pillow, and even then, he was shaking with laughter for the next fifteen minutes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s a very, very real chance that Zayn is onto something.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry pins him against the wall of the bathroom, hands wrapped tight around his thin wrists, held against the cool tiles.</p>
<p>     Louis preened and tipped his face up, skin raising with gooseflesh when Harry eyes the extended column of his throat. He smells divine, lingering rut, spicy and thick. Louis hopes his wrists have bracelets of lavender-and-azure bruise by nightfall.</p>
<p>     “Missed you.” Harry grumbled, pressing his face tight into Louis’ neck and scenting him, strong and definite as he can. “Four days is too long.”</p>
<p>     Louis tipped into the feeling. “It’s not <em> my </em>fault one of us is an alpha and has to spend half a week trying to knot the brains out of his fist.”</p>
<p>     Harry’s hand tangled in his hair. Tugged sharply. His teeth scraped Louis’ Adam’s apple. “And it’s not <em> mine </em>that one of us is an omega that has to spend half a week frantically riding a fake knot so he doesn’t beg to ride any alpha he smells, instead.”</p>
<p>     “Knothead.” Louis hissed, but they’re both grinning against each other’s skin, hot and damp with sweat and Louis’ still pressed against the cold wall, even though only one of his wrists is pinned, now. He could make excuses, but there’s one reason that he’s still here, and it’s because he would never, ever want to leave.</p>
<p>     “You smell like an alpha.” Harry growled, canines dipping into Louis’ collarbone.</p>
<p>     “‘S Liam.”</p>
<p>     “Why do you smell like Liam?”</p>
<p>     Louis shifted, pet over the back of Harry’s head, tilted his hips forward just barely. “I was cuddled with him and Zayn yesterday.”</p>
<p>     “No.”</p>
<p>     Harry says it so casually, so genuinely, that for a second, Louis convinced himself that he hadn’t. Then, his brows yank together in confusion. “What do you mean, no?”</p>
<p>     He pulls back to lock that dark, jeweled gaze on Louis’, mouth flattened into a thin, pale line but eyebrows settled impassively over his eyes. “I don’t want you to cuddle with him anymore.” He says. Blunt. Simple.</p>
<p>     And they have seven minutes before an interview. But Louis can’t stop himself. He <em> has </em> to tip his hips up. He <em> has </em> to show Harry how much he wants him, and see if he wants Louis in return. He has to <em> present</em>.</p>
<p>     Harry’s pupils seep the saturation from his irises, but his palm is soft and slow when it glides across Louis’ neck. “Don’t do that to me now, love.” He ordered steadily, even though he’s hard and Louis’ hard and knowing that they have to walk about of his echoing room in seven minutes is a whole different genre of hard. Louis shifted, whined. Harry gripped his chin between his warm fingers, and he fell silent. He pictures them inside him. He pictures them right where they are. “I know you heard me, doll.”</p>
<p>     Louis swallowed and nodded. “I heard you.” He affirms.</p>
<p>     Harry pulls a face like he understands. Louis can’t imagine he does. His whole chest is on fire, crackling, falling over itself like tumbling logs in a blaze. “Then listen.” He commanded.</p>
<p>     It takes him a breath. But he nods and hides his face against Harry’s collarbone.</p>
<p>     Six minutes later, they’re sitting in an interview, trying not to squint under the bright lights and pretending their hard-ons aren’t tenting painfully in their jeans.</p>
<p>     It’s never mattered before. Why should it now?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Oh my god, Louis, close your mouth.” Niall sighed, shaking his head. “I can <em> smell </em>the slick in your pants.”</p>
<p>     Louis’ cheeks bloomed, red bordering on magenta, hot and shamed. He slapped Niall’s shoulder and cried, “Niall!”</p>
<p>     He should be angry, and he is, a little, but Niall sort of has a point. What else is he meant to be doing when Harry’s <em> there</em>, moving like <em> that</em>? Swinging his hips to the beat of the music, skin glimmering beneath the flashing red lights. Curls bouncing around his face as it tipped towards the ceiling.</p>
<p>     He looks transcendent.</p>
<p>     “What?” Niall rolled his eyes, pulling Louis back to the torturous present. “You’re staring like you want to eat him.”</p>
<p>     “I don’t want to eat him.” Louis objected quietly. His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth. </p>
<p>     “Oh, of course, sorry,” Niall look a long sip of his Guinness. “You want <em> him </em> to eat <em> you</em>.”</p>
<p>     Louis sighed. “Shut up, Niall.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It only takes twenty more minutes for Harry to shimmy off the dance floor and take Louis into his broad, sweat-dappled arms.</p>
<p>     “Dance with me.” He breathes, dipping down to dart his tongue against the reddening shell of Louis’ ear.</p>
<p>     Louis whined and pouted. “Don’t make me.”</p>
<p>     Harry wiggles his hips and quirked his brows. “Show me those sweet moves, sugar-lips.” He giggled.</p>
<p>     “Why do you ruin everything?”</p>
<p>     Louis protests, but he still lets Harry lead him onto the floor. Lets him hold Louis’ hips against his own. Grind his arse into his thickening cock. He tips his head back, until it falls against Harry’s shoulder, and raises his hands to thread them through those soft, tangling curls. Like chiffon between his fingertips.</p>
<p>     “You look so pretty like this.” Harry rumbles, tucking his face into Louis’ bared neck. The music almost sweeps away his words, sand under wind. “All stretched out for me, yeah?” He says.</p>
<p>     “Shut up, oh my god,” Louis breathed out, but a smile tears across his mouth, irrepressible, like water rushing from a cracking dam. He feels light. Just an amalgamation of feathers on the breeze.</p>
<p>     Harry lowered his lips to Louis’ cheek. Mouthed along his cheekbone, hot and wet. “You like it.” He laughed, voice pitched deeper than it had been seconds ago. “Don’t act like you don’t. I can <em> smell </em>you, Lou.”</p>
<p>     Louis only dances closer.</p>
<p>     It’s a drug, being with Harry like this. Opium. Morphine. Heroin. It takes everything else away, leaves just <em> this </em> behind. This pretty, stinging itch along his sparking nerve endings, rushing in sharp currents over his skin, illecebrous as it is petrifying. It’s Harry’s hands on his body, lips on his face, so close and altogether too far from his own. It’s Harry murmuring that he can smell Louis through the space between them. It’s lights flashing and music pulsing and people yelling except Louis can’t really <em> feel </em>any of that, because why would he want to, anyway? Why, when Harry is holding onto him? Sweat licked at his spine alongside the electricity.</p>
<p>     Maybe four songs pass. Maybe sixteen. Maybe eighty. Harry’s cock presses hard against the swell of Louis’ ass, just beneath the dip of his waist. He moves against it devilishly and revels in the pants that Harry washes into his skin. <em> This </em> is existence. <em> This </em>is eternity.</p>
<p>     He scrambles to bridle the quiet little “Alpha.” that slips past his teeth, but Harry still hears, flicking his tongue over Louis’ shut eyelid, hands sliding around to grab and hold Louis’ soft stomach. They flatten, palms hot against Louis’ navel through the thin cotton, and pull Louis ever tighter against his body.</p>
<p>     “Something to ask, Omega?” Harry growls sweetly, mouth drifting to sweep along Louis’ hairline and trace back down to his scarlet-warm ear. His scent swirls around them like a cyclone, thick and cloying and angelic.</p>
<p>     Louis shakes his head, even when the words claw up his throat like itching smoke grappling to escape a chimney. “Nothing.” He promises. Harry’s fingertips dance along the waistband of his jeans. And, recklessly, Louis breaks and whines, “You smell so nice.”</p>
<p>     “God,” Harry gasps, voice throaty. “You too, Christ, I don’t know if it’s my rut or what and I don’t care, you smell so <em> pretty</em>, Lou, my little doll.”</p>
<p>     The song changes. Louis couldn’t recall the name of the last one. Tonight, when he tries to remember, he won’t remember this one, either. Just his own voice pleading, red-faced and whiny, “Call me doll again?”</p>
<p>     “Doll.” Harry purrs.</p>
<p>     Louis’ knees go weak.</p>
<p>     “My little doll,” he breathes against Louis’ jaw. “So precious, aren’t you, my boy,” </p>
<p>     He nodded, gasped out a noise of assent, fell ever-further into Harry’s firm chest. It was all he could do.</p>
<p>     “Careful.” Harry chuckled. “Your scent is filling up this whole room.”</p>
<p>     Louis glanced up through his wet lashes and met the gazes awaiting him. People stared from every direction, dark eyes trained on his swaying hips, his flushed cheeks, his cerulean eyes. Betas licked their lips. Alphas glared at Harry’s hands, wrapped possessively around his midsection. A few of them had fallen still on the dance floor, frozen in desire, jaw muscles flickering with jealousy and longing. Even omegas we’re shifting, blinking brightly. The attention of the club was centered, dizzyingly, on Louis.</p>
<p>     And Louis’ was on Harry, as it had always been.</p>
<p>     “Everyone’s staring.” He whispered, brows pulling together. He turned his head to look at Harry over his shoulder. “They’re staring at me.”</p>
<p>     “You look good.” Harry’s fingers brushed along his jaw, swept down his extended neck. “Of course they’re staring.”</p>
<p>     He could feel the tensions in the room rising, like a faucet spilling into a glass. Couples danced closer, smoother. Cheeks flushed like roses. And Louis’ so <em> wet </em> , so turned on, grinding evolved into rocking, desperately canting his hips against Harry’s, the scent of his arousal smoking out the room. Swirling up to the ceilings. It mixes with the warm, tinged scent of Harry’s desire, spiked with that purely alpha twang that warns: <em> this omega is mine, and no one else’s</em>. Louis loves being that omega. He loves that warning. Everyone watches him, everyone wants him, and everyone, <em> everyone </em>knows that they can’t have him.</p>
<p>     When Niall grabs his wrist, Harry growls something low and dangerous, rumbling against Louis’ back. He feels the marrow of his bones spark with interest.</p>
<p>     Niall rolls his eyes and tugs at Louis’ hand. “You’re about to start a public orgy.” He hisses, blue eyes wide. Behind him, Zayn and Liam have migrated close, eyes dark, Zayn’s head tipped back and Liam’s teeth lingering near his throat. Where his blood runs hottest. Niall snaps in front of their faces, looking all too overwhelmed for a man who’s probably still drunk, and pulls both pairs towards the door. “Time to go.”</p>
<p>     Harry doesn’t let go. Not when they’re walking outside. Not when they’re climbing in the car. Not when Louis shifts restlessly on his lap and chases a hint of satisfaction that he knows he won’t find. He holds on.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m staying with Zayn tonight!” Louis announces, with bellowing volume, the moment they step in the hotel. Liam growled, but Louis was staring at Zayn, trying desperately to convey that he can’t stay with Harry tonight through telepathic waves of emotion aimed studiously in Zayn’s direction.</p>
<p>     He <em> can’t </em>stay with Harry tonight. He’s so turned on, so willing, wanting to be knotted. And if he stays with Harry, all of the self-control he’s weakly built up over the years will utterly crash down around him. He can taste it, orangish-gray and dangerous, against his tongue.</p>
<p>     Even though Zayn doesn’t understand for a few existential moments, Liam seems to instantaneously. The frustrated expression wipes from his face, and he leans over to press a kiss to Zayn’s temple. His hand smooths over the side of Zayn’s head.</p>
<p>     In the time it’s taken for Zayn to comprehend Louis’ mental message and agree to it—via responsive mental message—Harry has un-looped his arms from Louis’ middle and is frowning down at him. Even if Louis can’t see it, he can most definitely feel it. “What—“ he begins.</p>
<p>     Louis snatches Zayn’s hand, and then Niall’s, for good measure. “Alpha-free night!” He explains without looking at them. “We’re doing face masks!”</p>
<p>     God, he hopes Zayn has face masks.</p>
<p>     He drags them into the lift and frantically smashes the buttons until the doors slide shut.</p>
<p>     Niall tipped his head against the wall. “I finally get invited to face mask night, but only by default.” He rolls his eyes. “I better get nachos out of this.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It takes six bottles of mini liquor from the hotel bar and an extremely decked-out tray of nachos before they’re absolutely hammered. </p>
<p>     The three of them were sprawled across the king-sized mattress in what would’ve been Zayn and Liam’s room, giggling hysterically, an episode of Friends blurred in old-fashioned saturation on the telly. Zayn had thrown an arm around Louis’ shoulders, and Niall was stretched across both their legs, staring at the ceiling. He has cheese on his lower lip, which only makes Louis laugh harder.</p>
<p>     “Are we going to—“ Niall stops to hiccup, and then burp. “Ignore the fact that Louis almost started a sex party at the club?”</p>
<p>     Louis flushes rosy as Zayn giggles. He jostles Louis with an elbow to his ribs. “Yeah, Lou, what was that about? You and Harry looked ready to eat each other.”</p>
<p>     Louis smacked his chest. “I saw you and Liam, too, you know. His teeth were literally <em> in </em>your trachea.” He said around a mouthful of cheese and crisps.</p>
<p>     “Were not!” Zayn gasped.</p>
<p>     Niall snorted at the ceiling when he and Louis laughed, in tandem: “Were too.”</p>
<p>     “You’re dodging the question.” Zayn huffed indignantly.</p>
<p>     Of <em> course </em>Louis’ dodging the question. He’s an expert. If avoiding questions is an Olympic sport, Louis is a gold medalist.</p>
<p>     But it lingers beneath his rib cage, sparking at every synapse. It floats between the gaps in his joints. He and Harry were like twin flames tonight, spinning around each other, blazing hotter together when everyone thought they’d fizzle out. They were raw, electric, the spark of lightning that ignites the fire. Their desire was tangible, hot in the cloying air, like an oar cutting through the mirror surface of a lake. They were everything Louis’ always wanted and nothing he’d ever known. He didn’t have the right words for it. Didn’t have anything except his open palms, tipped towards the sky, bared for Harry to fill.</p>
<p>     “Why does everything think Harry wants to eat me?” Louis grumbled, grinning, after a belated pause.</p>
<p>     “Because he does the serial killer face with you.” Niall strained to mimic it, which only had Zayn and Louis bursting into suffocating laughter. “Shut up, you sons of bitches, you know what I mean.”</p>
<p>     Louis leans back against the headboard, laughter still lingering in the corners of his smile, and shuts his eyes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He dreams of he and Harry dancing. All alone, this time around. Just the sway of their hips and the sweet, slow music. No words. No clothes. Just their bodies and dwindling time. It feels very much like heaven.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>No one mentions the club again, but Harry gaze is heavier when it lands on Louis’ skin.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis catapulted himself into Harry’s chest and whined weakly.</p>
<p>     “This has been a colossally shit week.” He whispers into Harry’s skin, because it has. Six shows, nineteen interviews, three different countries, several publicity outings and no sleep has all culminated into pure, white-hot frustration bubbling beneath Louis’ skin and a cluster headache. The air reeks of tension, emanating from all five of them. Louis can barely breathe around it. Even <em> he </em>knows he smells stressed, and he can’t smell himself.</p>
<p>     Harry stroked his spine. “I know, sweet, I agree.”</p>
<p>     Louis almost cries. Harry’s so damn nice. It’s dizzying. “Don’t you ever want to...” he tipped his face up. “Don’t you ever want to get away?”</p>
<p>     “Away from what?” Harry’s brows drew together, mouth turning down. “From the band?”</p>
<p>     “No. Or. I don’t know.” He sighed, twisting away, striving to hide his crimson cheeks from Harry’s inquiring gaze. “Just away, you know?”</p>
<p>     And then Harry’s tossing Louis gently off his lap and catapulting to his feet, spinning on his heels. A discontented noise escapes Louis’ throat without permission, drawn deep from his achy chest. His skin is cold without Harry’s against it.</p>
<p>     “Come on.” Harry held out a hand, palm up. “Let’s go for a drive. I know a place.”</p>
<p>     Louis stared up at him.</p>
<p>     “You want to go for a drive?” He frowned. “It’s half past midnight.”</p>
<p>     Harry just shrugged, shoulders jostling in a sort of awkward charm. “Less people out. Come on, let’s go.” He said, reaching forward to slip his fingers into Louis’ hair. “You said you wanted to get away, yeah? Lets get away.”</p>
<p>     His other hand was still palm-up. There for the taking.</p>
<p>     Louis grabs it and stands.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The drive is silent and sweet, and their hands twine together on the console like interlocking pieces of a puzzle. The radio hums lowly, delicate and gentle through the speakers, and Harry hums along to himself, sweeping his thumb over Louis’ knuckles. He turns it off when one of their songs starts to play.</p>
<p>     They end up parked on a dusky seaside overlook, car beams shining into the radiating darkness of the night sky and the sloshing waves. They must only be a few yards from the sharp drop of the cliff face, which is at least twenty feet from the cool sand below, but with the navy shade in all directions, it feels like wading in airy shadow. Louis can’t remember the last time he saw so many stars at once.</p>
<p>     He climbs out of the car and clambers onto the hood, shivering slightly inside Harry’s jumper when the headlights flick off and leave him with just the starlight and the emanating heat of the engine through the metal. He jumps when the car door slams, and Harry chuckles. Louis doesn’t know how he can even see him through the darkness.</p>
<p>     “I just—“ Louis begins, either minutes or hours later, when the words are going to tear through his sternum if he doesn’t voice them. “Sometimes, I just want to scream.”</p>
<p>     The air smells like sea salt and Harry smells like home beside him. “Why?” He asks calmly, evenly. Not like Louis’ crazy. Unusual. Just like he’s Louis.</p>
<p>     Louis fiddles with the cuffs on his jeans. “I don’t know.” He mumbles lamely. “It’s like... don’t you ever feel pent up, Haz? Like we’re just bouncing from place to place without ever landing in any of them?” Louis tipped his face towards Polaris. “Sometimes I feel like bubbles under a stopper, you know? All this pressure is building and I feel like I’m just going to—to...” a sigh. “To scream.”</p>
<p>     For a second, there’s only the waves sliding against the shore a hundred yards away and Louis’ own rushing blood, pounding through his hot ears.</p>
<p>     Harry’s knuckles bump against his. “Scream, then.”</p>
<p>     “What?” Louis asks, because that doesn’t make all that much sense. Not right now.</p>
<p>     “Scream.” Harry offers again. His voice is pink with fondness. “We’re at the ocean anyway. It’s the perfect place. No one to hear you but the waves.”</p>
<p>     “And you. And the people inevitably having sex down on the beach.”</p>
<p>     Even through the darkness, Louis can feel the feral alpha grin that Harry casts him. “Well, then, it’ll scare them away. Keep them from breaking laws. Public indecency is illegal and also gross.”</p>
<p>     “Yeah?” Louis raised a brow. “I always pegged you for an exhibitionist.”</p>
<p>     He can almost hear the eye roll. “Come on, Louis.” Harry jostles, and it takes Louis a moment to realize that he’s sitting up, legs hanging over the grill of the car. “Scream. You said you wanted to.”</p>
<p>     Bashfulness bleeds over Louis’ skin like water through cotton. “I can’t.”</p>
<p>     Harry smells like excitement, now, sharp and sure, swirling with the salt in the breeze. “Sure you can.” He wobbles to his legs and heaves himself onto the roof, standing tall in his lunar silhouette. “I’ll even do it first.” He says boldly.</p>
<p>     “Harry—“</p>
<p>     It’s all Louis manages to get out before Harry tips his head back and bellows towards the stars, utterly loud and free, wild, like a true wolf howling up at the moon. Louis can almost hear it in his voice; the alpha that’s broken free inside his chest, rearing around in great circles for breathless moments before it’s caged up once more. It’s a sound that bleeds with power, a call to the untamed and proud. With his eyes adjusted to the dark, Louis can see Harry’s arms spread wide and his hair hanging angelically around his face.</p>
<p>     When he shuts his mouth, his face is cool. Smooth as a pond on a windless day. He’s at peace.</p>
<p>     It’s the only thing that persuades Louis to climb up next to him, throw his arms out wide, and scream at the obsidian ocean splayed before him.</p>
<p>     And, it’s—at first he feels silly, knowing Harry’s watching him, probably grinning that stupidly fond grin that makes Louis want to melt in his shoes, but then. Then it just feels good. It feels like all that condensation that had been popping beneath the cork just flows free, releasing slowly, unclamping from around his lungs. Letting all the air out of a balloon. Blowing a breath between his lips until there’s none left to draw from. It’s everything that’s been plaguing him drifting free on the ocean wind, settling somewhere far below, barely bobbing on the waves before it sinks to the sandy floor. It’s his omega, bounding free, sprinting fast and joyous through his blood.</p>
<p>     There is no one in the world that he would’ve done this with except for Harry.</p>
<p>     They end up cross-legged on the roof, faces tipped towards the glittery stars in quiet contemplation. When Louis listens, he can almost hear the echo of his own scream, floating back at him. Gentler, this time. Not so confused. Not so hurt. Harry settles a hand on his knee and Louis lets his eyes close.</p>
<p>     Is this life? Is it music? Is it Harry? Is it screaming at the ocean and not expecting a response? Louis prays to every god he knows, and a few he doesn’t, that he never has to choose. Life feels too much like all three.</p>
<p>     “Do you feel better?” Harry asks, lolling his head to one side to look at the side of Louis’ face.</p>
<p>     Louis’ cheeks heat beneath the attention. “Yeah, Haz, I think I do.” He doesn’t turn to look into Harry’s eyes, even when something in his rearing omega begs him to. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>     “For?”</p>
<p>     “I don’t know.” A soft pause. “Yelling first?”</p>
<p>     Harry snorted and squeezed Louis’ knee, giggling when Louis breathed out a laugh. “Not a problem, Lou.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That’s the night that change begins.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis is nesting. Louis is very, very much nesting, which is horrible, because they only have two days left in Stockholm and if he doesn’t have at least half a day to set it up and three days to smother himself in it, he steers straight past jittery and right into batshit crazy. It’s why he tells himself to wait. After Stockholm comes two days in Oslo, and then they have a whole week in LA. Which is time enough for Louis not only to smother, but to absolutely bask in his nest. All he has to do is wait a bit.</p>
<p>     He’s not doing anything of the sort.</p>
<p>     “Louis, why are you so stressed?” Zayn sighs worriedly, when Louis rearranges a pair of light jeans for the fourth time atop the rumpled blankets of his hotel room.</p>
<p>     “Might not be stress.” Louis says, too fast, too skittish, like the sparking end of a live wire. “Might be the foreword to an early heat.”</p>
<p>     “That’s worse.” Zayn points out. Louis grumbled and fixed Harry’s jumper at the top middle, near where his head would lay. Something’s missing. There’s a piece he needs and doesn’t have.</p>
<p>     Louis’ not tetchy about anything. Not arrival times, not reigning his attitude, not making sure everything is perfect all the time. That’s Liam’s role to play.</p>
<p>     But it’s different when it comes to his nest. Maybe it’s an omega thing, or maybe it’s a Louis thing, but he needs each item to be exact. A place for everything, and everything in its place. He doesn’t let any of the boys into his nests, terrified they’d muck it up and he’d have to start from the beginning. Niall isn’t even allowed in the same room. His nests are his sanctuary and his creation. They’re constructed of very specific items from his wardrobe; soft things, mostly. Comfy sweaters, blankets from Donny, cotton joggers. Those form almost the whole base and include whatever duvets or sheets are around him at the time. By the top is his baby blanket, the one his mum had knit him, and a scarf that always smells like her scent mixed with the nutmeg-and-vanilla perfume Louis bought her one Christmas. Next to that is one of Liam’s jumpers, a pair of Niall’s trackies, and Zayn’s old, grayish beanie. On the other side, in a meticulous row, are all of Harry’s pieces. A few are interspersed among the base of the nest, up around the sides, but most find their way haloing Louis’ head. The closest is Harry’s bandana, tucked so near to his face that it practically presses against his nose. After that are assorted jumpers, joggers, even a clean pair of socks, in order of which smell the strongest and feel the best. It’s a very specific system.</p>
<p>     Louis could spend eons making his nests, over-analyzing the lay of each item until it’s picture perfect. Being on tour robs him of that privilege, cutting him down to half-days. Sometimes less if he wants to have enough time to at least take the edge off. But it’s nothing compared to this. This frantic scramble of assembly, tossing clothes together, knowing he’s missing something but not even knowing what. The duvet doesn’t smell right, either. It’s still too hotel-ish. </p>
<p>     “Hello!” Zayn calls, pushing up from his chair to wave an olive-colored hand in front of Louis’ face. “You look totally out of it, babe, I can see it. You’re not dropping, are you?” His voice tinges green with dripping concern.</p>
<p>     Louis smacked his hand away. “No. That hasn’t happened since X Factor. Not on tour, anyway.” That’s a lie. “I’m fine.”</p>
<p>     “You’re <em> nesting</em>.” Zayn grabbed his wrist, yanking him to a stop halfway back to the bed. His eyes flame. “You’re not fine. What’s going on?”</p>
<p>     Louis feels the words jar against his rib cage, the shattered scraps and fragments slicing into the marrow. They hurt, like smashed shards of metal. Needles. He’s just glass.</p>
<p>     He shoves it away.</p>
<p>     His frantic hands dutifully adjusted the jeans at the edge of the nest, folding them over and then spreading them out again. “Nothing’s going on, okay? Sometimes omegas nest, you should know that. You’re the <em> last </em>person I thought would be freaking out about this.”</p>
<p>     “Why aren’t you freaking out about this?”</p>
<p>     “Because.” He took a slow, fiberglass breath. “I can fix it.”</p>
<p>     “You should get Harry’s help.”</p>
<p>     Louis spun on him sharply. “Why would I need Harry’s help?” He snapped.</p>
<p>     Zayn shrugged lackadaisically. “Because he’s an alpha.” He pulled a face. “Liam always helps me when I start to feel like nesting.”</p>
<p>     Louis’ face scrunched. “How?”</p>
<p>     “Well, I mean,” Zayn fish-mouthed for a few moments. “He fucks it out of me—“</p>
<p>     “<em>Lovely</em>!”</p>
<p>     “But! But,” Zayn went on insistently, waving his hands when Louis glared at him. “I’m sure Harry could, like, cuddle you. Or something. He’s an alpha.”</p>
<p>     “Zayn.” Louis grumbled, balling up a head scarf and chucking it onto the floor in frustration. Almost immediately, he picks it up and delicately returns it to the nest. “I don’t need an alpha to help me with anything. And even if I did, which I don’t, I certainly don’t need it to be <em> Harry </em>. Got it?”</p>
<p>     Zayn stood up and sighed, far more concerned than insulted, even among Louis’ grossly sharp tone. “Got it.” He agreed, nodding. He’s got one hand on the door when he reminds, in an all-too-uninterested voice, “I’m only trying to do what I think is best for you.”</p>
<p>     Louis crosses the room and wraps his arms around Zayn’s waist, a balloon of anxiety deflating in his chest when Zayn pats his hands, tips his head back to rest against Louis’ forehead.</p>
<p>     “Thank you.” Louis murmurs, still holding tight, into the fabric of Zayn’s collar. His heart thumps with fear and vexation.</p>
<p>     This wasn’t <em> meant </em>to happen.</p>
<p>     He misses his nest back home. His closet in his London flat had ideal floor space for a homey, sequestered nest, only ever for him. It was filled to the brim with pillows, blankets, different scents and clothes from different people, even fairy lights strung up on the walls. His little sanctuary. What he wouldn’t give to curl up in it now, head cushioned on Harry’s old pillow, and fall asleep.</p>
<p>     Zayn squeezed his hand gently. “Don’t thank me, Loubear.” He extracted himself from Louis’ arms and spun to plant a strawberry-sweet kiss on the top of his head. “Trust your heart before your head, the gut knows what the brain isn’t able to yet!”</p>
<p>     And then he’s gone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis stared distastefully at his nest, hands on his hips, lips pursed.</p>
<p>     Something was missing.</p>
<p>     He’s stomping out of the room before he lets himself think, unlocking Harry’s door with the spare key card and shutting it behind him. It clicks loudly. “Hazza?” He asks, a little dazed as the thick scent of shower gel and <em> alpha </em>curls over his skin. Harry must’ve just gotten out.</p>
<p>     “Just a second!” A voice calls, and then Harry’s emerging from around the corner, swamped in a big yellow jumper, curls still damp and leaving spots of water on the fabric of the sweater. He smiles, wide and glimmering, and Louis’ knees knock. “What’s up, Louis?” He asks sweetly.</p>
<p>     Louis wishes he could speak. All of his attention is utterly fixated on this new jumper. He’s never seen it before, and he’s seen all of Harry’s clothes.</p>
<p>     “Lou?” Harry prods again, stepping closer to stroke a hand reverently along Louis’ hair. “Everything good?”</p>
<p>     But Louis just eyes the sweater that’s settled so artfully over Harry’s torso, heart jumping in his chest at the sweet, dandelion color, the way it falls and creases around Harry’s waist, how he has the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. Louis thinks it would be soft inside. Soft, and warm. And it would smell good. Like Harry. He takes a fistful of the fabric at Harry’s diaphragm.</p>
<p>     He doesn’t really mean to ask, but it bubbles up anyway, skirting away when his tongue tries to leash it and falling over his teeth. “Can I have this?”</p>
<p>     It clicks halfway, in that moment. This is the last piece of his nest. This is what he wants. This perfect, sunshine sweater that smells like Harry and feels so soft against his palm.</p>
<p>     Harry pulled a face, reddish lips tugged down. Louis’ fingers itched with desire to reach up and smooth them back into a shape of ease, complacency. “My jumper?” He asks, voice drawn up on delicate strings of confusion.</p>
<p>     Louis nods. The words fumble across his lips before his mind can register them. “Want it for my nest, it’s the last piece. Please?”</p>
<p>     Harry’s eyes do something funny in Louis’ peripheral vision. Something like darkening, intensity swallowing up that pretty green, but not in a way that’s bad. Louis’ too distracted to really notice. He sweeps his thumb across the soft fabric.</p>
<p>     “You’re nesting?” Harry asks, and Louis nods agreeably. Sirens rear tinnily in the back of his head. “Why, what’s going on?”</p>
<p>     Louis’ hum was unaffected as it was distracted. “Nesting. Can I have this?” He repeats, hand flattening to stroke down Harry’s chest.</p>
<p>     It feels as though there’s something very big he’s missing, something poking sharp barbs into his unarmored skin. But his brain is swimming underwater, cool and muffled, and even the sirens that had begun to sing were falling silent, tucked somewhere small and soundproof. He tipped his head to one side and whined softly when Harry’s hand came to rest on the side of his extended neck. He feels pretty. Small and warm and pretty.</p>
<p>     Harry’s staring at him.</p>
<p>     “Yeah, baby, um...” he blinks idly, tongue darting out to wet his lower lip before his white teeth dug into it. “Can I... can I walk you back to your room?”</p>
<p>     It takes Louis heartbeat to respond. When he does, it’s only a mildly dazed hum of, “Hmm?”</p>
<p>     “Nest, doll.” Harry says, voice endlessly patient. It feels like the only thing reaching Louis through miles of concrete. “Take you back there?”</p>
<p>     His nest.</p>
<p>     “My nest.” He says dreamily. His hand tightens in the jumper, knuckles whitening, as he worries his bottom lip with sharp teeth. “I can have this?”</p>
<p>     Harry smiled mellowly and stroked his thumb over Louis’ cheek. “Yes. Of course.”</p>
<p>     He swings Louis up into his arms and carries him back to his room.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With Harry’s yellow jumper bundled beneath his head and his scent still clinging to Louis’ skin, the nest is perfect. More perfect than Louis could’ve hoped.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry is sick of waiting. Louis can feel it in his palms, his gut. It itches beneath his fingernails. He’s tired of being patient for Louis. He’s ready.</p>
<p>     Louis is... Louis. He doesn’t know anything, and he doesn’t pretend to.</p>
<p>     It’s their second day in LA when Louis feels it approaching. The heat churning beneath his skin, like thousands of butterflies flapping flaming wings. At best, he’s got half a day.</p>
<p>     He texts all the boys, frantically rearranging his room, primping the lovely nest he’d carted from Stockholm, to Oslo, to here. He sets his toys in the bedside drawer, all too attainable. He tosses non-perishable foods and water beside the lamp. Then, he calls Harry.</p>
<p>     It’s some sort of secret, that Harry’s sometimes allowed in a makeshift nest. He pretends it’s because the other boys would be jealous, but, really, it’s because Louis doesn’t want to tell them. Harry still isn’t permitted to be in his London nest, or even close to it, really, but. But nests on tour are hardly nests. It will smell of him either way.</p>
<p>     That’s where they are now, sitting upright in the arranged pile, Louis sat between the V of Harry’s legs as Harry rests his spine against the headboard. His chest is hot on Louis’ back. Their hands are settled atop each other on Louis’ thighs.</p>
<p>     He groans and sighs. “I don’t want to go into heat.” Louis whispers, running his nails along the veins in the back of Harry’s hands.</p>
<p>     Harry’s cold-tipped nose pressed behind his ear, and then against his scent gland. “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>     “Did you cover all the PR stuff?” Louis mumbled, shifting. “I feel bad.”</p>
<p>     “Yeah, I talked to Paul, and he’s talking to the higher beings. Don’t feel bad.” His lips brushed Louis’ pulse. “It’s not like it’s your fault.” A pause. “<em>I </em> feel bad, though.”</p>
<p>     For some reason, talking about this, Louis knows Harry wants him to ask for help. Even though he’s never done it before. Even though Louis’d explained numerous times why it terrified him to spend heat with an alpha he wasn’t in a relationship with.</p>
<p>     Harry wants him to ask. And Louis can’t do that.</p>
<p>     “It’s not like you have to feel bad for me.” Louis said, a little harsher than he might’ve another day. “You don’t feel bad for Zayn.”</p>
<p>     “Well, Zayn has—“</p>
<p>     “An alpha?” Louis tugged his hands away from Harry’s. Crossed his arms over his chest.</p>
<p>     Silence blanketed the room like snow, suffocating and cold. “I was going to say Liam, but, sure, if you want to be mean about it.”</p>
<p>     “I wasn’t being mean about it.” That’s a lie. “I don’t need <em> anyone </em>to help me with my heat.” He catapulted out of his nest and threw an arm towards the door.</p>
<p>     Harry just laughed heartlessly and shook his head. “So you’ve said.” He mumbled. “A thousand times. I’ve got it, alright? Sorry for trying to comfort you.”</p>
<p>     Louis internalized his wince and tipped his face towards the ceiling in frustration. “Implying that I need an alpha to help me with something I’ve been doing alone since high school isn’t <em> comforting</em>, knothead.” His jaw feathered.</p>
<p>     Harry stood. The air was tangy and sharp between them. Angry. “Don’t call me a knothead.” He snapped. “God, you’re so temperamental, Louis. I shouldn’t have to watch my every word around you, afraid you’ll take offense to them even if you didn’t the day before! It’s ludicrous.”</p>
<p>     “Did you swallow a thesaurus on the way here?” Louis huffed.</p>
<p>     Harry growled and gripped his hair in his fists, stomping towards the door. “All I do is try to be a good alpha for you—“</p>
<p>     “You’re <em> not </em>my alpha!” Louis screeches.</p>
<p>     Harry stares at him.</p>
<p>     Louis feels chords snap between their bodies. His hands go cold, and his voice burrows somewhere sickeningly out of reach.</p>
<p>     “I just wanted to help you.” Harry’s eyes are dull and sharp in the same second. “You know what?” He shakes his head. Presses his lips together. Shuts off. “Fuck you.” He whispers. The words are hollow. Passionless. Sad. He tugs the door open and starts out it, raking a hand roughly through his hair.</p>
<p>     “You can’t be mad at me.” Louis calls, extracting his voice from where he’d lost it in his chest. It sounds stronger than he feels. “It’s not for you to be mad about.”</p>
<p>     But Harry doesn’t turn to look at him. “Whatever, Louis.” He mutters. The door clicks closed behind him. Louis wishes it had slammed. Maybe the world wouldn’t feel so achingly quiet.</p>
<p>     He stares at the empty room. At the abandoned nest on the bed.</p>
<p>     And for the first time in his life, Louis thinks that maybe he and Harry have already lost their chance.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Act II</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>part two !! thank you everyone for reading, i love you all !!<br/>&lt;333</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Louis spends his heat trying not to cry Harry’s name into the sheets. He fails.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Everyone notices that something is wrong. The boys, first, when Louis doesn’t ask Harry to cuddle him when he gets out of heat. When he doesn’t even look at Harry, and Harry doesn’t look at him. Then the crew. Then the fans. Then, it feels, the whole world.</p>
<p>     They try, on stage. Try to be the <em> LouisandHarry </em> that everyone has always known. But every time Louis catches Harry’s eye—which is too often, because Harry’s <em> always </em> looking at him, gaze shimmering somewhere halfway between somber and furious—his voice falters, and the lyrics to his own songs fall out of his head. It’s dizzying.</p>
<p>     They haven’t spoken since Harry left his room. Louis doesn’t try to.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A week. Then two. Louis loses count of the days halfway through three weeks. It hurts too much to remember.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s angry. He’s so, so angry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m worried.” Zayn and Niall announce at the same time. Louis watches the door that had just closed.</p>
<p>     He’d walked into Zayn and Liam’s hotel room and watched Harry mutter something about taking a nap, standing from the bluish-gray couch. His head was dipped, but when their arms brushed as he slipped past Louis in the doorway, he glanced up. Just for a moment. A breath. Then he was gone, and the door was shutting behind him.</p>
<p>     “About what?” Louis asked absently, dragging his eyes slowly away from the doorknob. His gaze sticks on it, like maybe it will twist and Harry will be back. He has to tear it and the hope away.</p>
<p>     Niall snorted, gesturing frantically in Louis’ direction. “You and Harry! Harry and you! All of it!” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “All of it!” He repeated desperately, voice distraught.</p>
<p>     Zayn rubbed his back. Niall collapsed into his lap, groaning softly. “All of it.” Zayn assured solemnly.</p>
<p>     “I don’t—I don’t...” Louis stammered, shaking his head. His cheeks were hot. The tips of his ears were stained red. “I mean, I don’t know—“</p>
<p>     Zayn studied him for a melancholic moment, and then shifted over on the sofa and patted the empty cushion. Louis collapsed heavily beside him. “What happened?”</p>
<p>     When Louis didn’t answer, Niall echoed the question.</p>
<p>     “We got into a fight.” He says, eyes trained on the bowl of fake fruit on the coffee table, and the vase of fake flowers beside it. He wonders when everything will stop being fake. “It was bad. I guess. I don’t know.”</p>
<p>     “You’re shutting down.” Zayn observes studiously, which is right on the money, because Louis <em> is </em> shutting down. Cheers.</p>
<p>     He’s not sure what else to do anymore. Maybe he’s forgotten how to do anything else. It certainly feels like a faulty function. Like whatever makes him tick has stopped spinning with the cogs.</p>
<p>     It’s been factored out completely, and logically, Louis knows that. There’s a Harry-shaped hole where all of his working parts are standing still.</p>
<p>     “He’s ready.” Is all Louis says, and he hopes they understand, because he can’t have this conversation. He wants to cry when he has this conversation; wants to have total emotional catharsis and revelation. And he’s not sure the crying button still works inside his gears. He’s not sure all the right wires are attached.</p>
<p>     Zayn shifts, sharp shoulder knocking against Louis’. Niall made a face and asked, “Aren’t you?” His blonde brows were furrowed.</p>
<p>     “No.” Louis said immediately. And then: “I don’t know. Maybe. But no. Yes. It’s—complicated.”</p>
<p>     “It sounds it.” Niall agreed under his breath.</p>
<p>     Zayn’s elbow struck his rib cage, and he yelped and pressed himself into the arm of the couch, rubbing at it. A pout manifested on his mouth, blue eyes shimmering.</p>
<p>     Louis blinked at them. Zayn smelled nice, but there was something unnaturally sour brewing there, too. Something like concern. “What do you guys think?” Louis asks, and he knows his voice is dull, uninterested, but he can’t force it to be enthusiastic. Feelings can’t be worth it when he isn’t allowed to share them with Harry. It sounds dreadfully codependent, and it is, and Louis wouldn’t have it any other way.</p>
<p>     “It’s you and Harry.” Zayn made a face. “I always sort of expected you to bond and have a lot of loud, curly babies.”</p>
<p>     “Yeah, but do you think I’m <em> ready?</em>” Louis pressed.</p>
<p>     “Honestly, Lou?” Zayn began, and Niall was already nodding along, like he knew what Zayn was going to say. Maybe he did. “I think you were ready before he was. Probably since the beginning. You talk yourself out of it every day because you’re terrified of letting people down, and you have this twisted idea that you’ll let <em> Harry </em> down by not being enough in a relationship, as if you could ever let him down. Or not be enough for him.” He shrugged, like he hadn’t just turned Louis’ life on its top. “You’ve always been ready.”</p>
<p>     Louis wants to say no more than he’s ever wanted to say anything in his life. He wants to tell Zayn that he’s wrong, that Louis’ never been ready, how could Zayn ever think he was ready? And even if he was...</p>
<p>     Even if he was. He’s angry. Harry and he both said dangerous things in that godforsaken hotel room. He can’t just forget them.</p>
<p>     Zayn’s not really wrong. Maybe. But he’s still angry. Angry enough to want to tell him he is.</p>
<p>     Louis leans back on the sofa and makes them change the subject.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry’s drunk, and crying, and banging on Louis’ door.</p>
<p>     Louis pulls the door open, hugging his icy arms around his waist, and Harry stumbles in, catching first at the smooth wall and then at Louis’ thin, sleep-warm shoulders. He turned the air con up before he went to sleep, and his skin is already chilly outside the blankets.</p>
<p>     Harry’s green eyes were bleary in the moonbeam and city light that streamed through the cracked curtains. His hair was a mess around his face. Even in near-darkness, Louis could see the flush of alcohol that sat low in his cheeks.</p>
<p>     He sniffs. Tears cling to his jaw. One drips off his nose. “<em>Lou</em>.” He breathes, too reverent, too brokenhearted. “Are you divorcing me?”</p>
<p>     Louis reached back, extracting himself from Harry’s scalding palms, and pulled a jumper over his bare skin. His trousers are still in the bedroom, so there’s not much to do about his bare legs, but he can suffice with boxers until Harry goes back to his own room. “What are you doing here, Harry?” He can hear how defeated his voice sounds in his own ears. His head hung low.</p>
<p>     “You’re divorcing me. Why are you divorcing me?” Harry falls to his knees and hugs tightly to Louis’ thighs. “Please don’t divorce me.”</p>
<p>     “Harry.” Louis pinches his own palm to keep from reaching out and threading his fingers through Harry’s disheveled curls. “Harry, get up, please.”</p>
<p>     Harry does as told. The tears have stopped, but his eyes are bleaker than before. Colored blue with despondency.</p>
<p>     He sniffs quietly, aimlessly, gentle as he’d always been. “I don’t want you to go.” He whispers.</p>
<p>     It knocks Louis straight in the chest. It spears through his lungs and lets loose all the air he thought he could save for when he ran out. It dampens every reserve. Leaves him deserted and shot full of holes. Spots danced in his vision.</p>
<p>     “I could never—“ a rock had lodged in his throat. He swallows around it, but it hurts, jabbing into his trachea and scraping up his vocal chords. “I could never leave, Haz. Not you.”</p>
<p>     “You are, though.” Harry says. He sounds sickeningly sober, and with the room spinning around him like this, Louis wonders if they’ve switched places. “You’re leaving, and you’re taking all the pieces of me with you.”</p>
<p>     Harry tilts Louis’ chin up and slants their wet lips together. It’s very soft. Harry tastes like alcohol and mints and he smells like alpha and forest and <em> hurthurthurt </em> and Louis can’t breathe around any of it. Around the gaping hole in his chest. Harry’s mouth is hot. The kiss is drunken. It’s plain and it’s encompassing in its entirety. Louis can’t <em> breathe.</em></p>
<p>     For all the times Louis had thought about their first kiss, he never thought it would be so sad.</p>
<p>     It’s why he pushes Harry away.</p>
<p>     He hopes Harry remembers in the morning. Then, he hopes he doesn’t.</p>
<p>     “You’re drunk, Harry.” He says, tipping his head down until his chin almost presses into his chest. He’s not sure he can reject Harry and look into his eyes at the same time. It’s cowardly, and it’s the only thing Louis knows in this moment. He picks up a water bottle from the minibar beside them. “You should sleep.”</p>
<p>     Harry’s lips were velvet and chiffon against his. He can still feel them, imprinted on his mouth. Warm and smooth.</p>
<p>     Harry dips to press them together again, and Louis stops him, hand to his chest, face tipping up because now he can’t <em> not </em> look at Harry. He deserves this punishment. His head shakes minutely when Harry begins to lean forward again. It’s all deafening silence, forever too loud.</p>
<p>     “Why don’t you want to be with me?” Harry whispers. The tears spill over and down his cheeks.</p>
<p>     Louis takes a breath that hurts his worn lungs. He hands Harry the water bottle in his hand. He lays him down on the hotel sofa and knows that Harry will be asleep before his head is all the way down.</p>
<p>     He goes to bed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry cries at the concert a day later, when they sing Over Again. Louis cries when he sees Harry crying. He doesn’t know how to <em> live</em>, how to breathe, how to see through it. He’s drowning, right there on stage.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d never thought it was possible to drown on land.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’re being stupid.”</p>
<p>     Louis didn’t turn to look at Liam. Didn’t even react, really, not past a dismal twitch of his eyebrow. Liam pauses the game of FIFA on the telly, so Louis drops the controller on the bedspread.</p>
<p>     “Harry loves you.”</p>
<p>     “I know.” Louis can’t remember the last time he could hear his own voice. “I love him.”</p>
<p>     “Then what are you <em> doing</em>?” Liam snaps, ever the overbearing, nosey alpha that Louis adores and despises him for. A smile plays on his mouth. It makes him sad that it feels so foreign.</p>
<p>     He shrugs. “We’re both mad at each other.” A pause. “We said things we shouldn’t have and stewed on things we should’ve let go.”</p>
<p>     Liam cocked a brow. Louis felt transparent. “Do you <em> feel </em> angry, Tommo, or just like you’re supposed to be?”</p>
<p>     Which. Is a good point. It’s an extremely good point, actually, and for the first time in a month and a half, he feels something like a rubber band snap beneath his diaphragm. The pain is sharp, but it’s there. He thinks, stupidly, that his cogs are trying to tell him things, and then reminds himself that he’s not actually a machine.</p>
<p>     He doesn’t feel angry anymore.</p>
<p>     “It’s not that easy.” He says, even as he shakes his head. “I’m sure Harry is, and... there’s still stuff we need to talk through. Stuff for both of us to learn.”</p>
<p>     “Okay?” Liam snapped. “So go talk through it. Go make him not angry anymore. Go learn the things you need to with him. For the love of God, Louis, go and be in love with him. You’ve waited four years for it.” A pause. “As has he.”</p>
<p>     When Louis stands, he feels like he’s walking into certain death. But at least it feels like walking into <em> something </em> again.</p>
<p>     It’s midnight, and it takes all of ten steps to get to Harry’s hotel room, but every stride recovers the emotions that Louis had thrown away and restores them tenfold. He thinks of Harry, surely asleep right now, and his heart aches. Fear-wracked <em> and </em> hopeful.</p>
<p>     He pushes the door open. Doesn’t wonder why it’s unlocked. Even when they can’t look at each other, Harry’s door is open for him.</p>
<p>     Harry’s asleep, face cushioned on the pillow, hair fanned around him.</p>
<p>     There’s a Harry that lives in Louis’ head; a soft-faced, curly-haired, younger Harry, who jittered when Louis spoke to him. Who sprawled himself across Louis’ body, sat in his lap, simply because he couldn’t stand not being, not <em> feeling </em> close to him. Shorter. Maybe quieter. Unpresented but still intense, always staring with those dazzling green eyes, afraid to blink. The boy who’d crawled into Louis’ bunk in the X Factor house and whispered <em> I’m scared </em> but never what he was scared of.</p>
<p>     What was he scared of?</p>
<p>     Louis could never love anyone more than he loves that boy, that young, sweet Harry. It’s the same way he could never love anyone more than he loves <em> this </em> Harry: older, taller, kinder. Asleep and breathing slow, lanky arms wrapped around his chest, a look of sad frustration creased between his brows. Louis wants to reach out and smooth it away.</p>
<p>     There’s a Harry that lives in his head, but Louis’ not sure it compares to this one. This one who is real, warm, breathing. Who Louis loves, impossibly more and more, with each stalled breath. He’s not perfect, but he’s <em> right</em>. He’s always been right. The right one.</p>
<p>     <em> Mate.</em></p>
<p>     Louis crosses the room and tucks himself into Harry’s bed, uncrossing his arms so they’ll wrap around Louis’ small body, curling into his side. Harry shifts, makes a soft sound of exhausted confusion, and for a moment, he’s silent. His limbs are stiff. It’s the only way Louis’ knows that he’s awake, probably staring down at him, his air a little stuttered in his chest. Louis can’t blame him, really. They’ve barely spoken in weeks, haven’t been in the same bed since before Louis’ heat. Louis’ breaking all the rules.</p>
<p>     He wonders, for a moment, if Harry will kick him out.</p>
<p>     It feels like ages pass before Harry’s arms tighten around Louis’ body, palm splaying flat across his spine, holding him close. He goes sleep-lax and soft, sniffling unconsciously into Louis’ hair. When Louis looks up, his eyes are closed, and his pupils shift idly beneath his purplish eyelids. His face looks gaunt, sickly. When was the last time Louis actually looked at him? Dark circles frame his under eyes, and his lips are bitten red, but the line between his brows is gone. Louis tucks his face into Harry’s neck.</p>
<p>     His eyes fall closed like curtains, heavy and exhausted, as sleep takes him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis dreams of Harry holding him in a massive armchair, their bodies twined together, feet knocking. It’s nothing special. It’s not ballroom dancing in expensive suits, it’s not drinking champagne on a yacht. It’s just them. Just Louis and Harry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The shower is running.</p>
<p>     Louis rubbed his eyes and rolled onto his back, blinking up at the white ceiling. The bed sheets and his skin smelled like Harry, and his omega preened with it, mewling at the return of it’s alpha. Still, his heart thumps nervously against his rib cage.</p>
<p>     For a second, he wonders what Harry would do if he stripped down and stepped into the shower with him.</p>
<p>     The water shut off.</p>
<p>     He sits up, hissing at the icy press of the headboard against the back of his neck. He tangled his feet in the sheets just to have something to do.</p>
<p>     Steam curls from the bathroom when the door swings open, the scent of fresh soap and <em> Harry</em>, pure alpha, flooding the room. A white towel hangs low on Harry’s hips, exposing the sharp V at the base of his long, firm torso. Water dots his golden skin like constellations. Louis’ tongue is heavy in his mouth, itching with desire to lick the droplets from his muscles. From his dark, lovely tattoos, painted on his body. Harry’s hair curls, wet and dark, around his face, dripping onto his collarbones, and his eyes are guarded where they rest on Louis’ face, dangerously unsure.</p>
<p>     Louis shifts on the mattress.</p>
<p>     Harry pads over to his ajar suitcase, leaving vaguely damp footprints in his wake. The muscles of his back roil beneath his gold skin when he reaches down.</p>
<p>     “So.” Harry begins quietly, tugging his Leeds Festival tee over his wet curls. Louis squirms. “Haven’t talked in a while.”</p>
<p>     Louis wants to say something intellectual. Emotional. Something that will tell Harry how he feels, how he’s always felt, and how it’s been eating away at him for the past seven weeks. Something romantic that he can repeat in their wedding vows. His blood thrums in his veins, anxious, intense.</p>
<p>     <em> You’re leaving, and you’re taking all the pieces of me with you.</em></p>
<p>     “I like you.” Louis blurts.</p>
<p>     Harry turns on his heel and raises a brow.</p>
<p>     “I do.” He goes on, fisting sweaty palms in the bedsheets. “There’s stuff we have to talk about, and so much stuff we have to figure out, but—I want to be with you. I’ve wanted to be with you since we met.” A pause. “You know that, don’t you?”</p>
<p>     Harry’s silent as he pulls on a pair of gray joggers, damp hair hanging into his eyes. His sweeping eyelashes were dotted with glittering drops of water. He rubs at his nose, painfully mute, and then slips beneath the duvet beside Louis and tucks his feet beneath his bum.</p>
<p>     “I know that.” His voice wavers thickly. He raises a hand, sharp teeth digging into his knuckle, and begins to speak around it. “I don’t—“</p>
<p>     “Fingers out of your mouth, please,” Louis whispers, gentle and fond, reaching up to tug Harry’s knuckles from between his teeth. He tangles their hands together when they settle against the bedspread.</p>
<p>     Harry’s gaze is fixated on their entwined fingers. His eyes swim. He opens his mouth, as if to speak, but no sound comes out, and he closes it again.</p>
<p>     Louis shifted ever closer, led by the string wrapped around his rib cage, pulled taut between he and Harry. His hand raised to sweep wet curls from Harry’s brow, and his eyes fluttered shut, a tear sliding down his red cheek. “I’m sorry for saying those things in the hotel room, Alpha.” Louis whispers softly. It slips out, but he finds he doesn’t want to rescind it. The word feels familiar in his mouth. “I was angry, but I shouldn’t have treated you like that. I care about you more than anyone. And I want to be with you.”</p>
<p>     Harry’s head dips. He’s quiet for so long that Louis begins to fear he won’t speak at all.</p>
<p>     “Sixteen, Lou.” Harry whispers finally, blinking against the tears in his lovely eyes. “When I was soft and naïve and hadn’t presented and mixed up rights and lefts. I didn’t know anything then, but I knew that I belonged to you.”</p>
<p>     Louis’ heart lodged in his chest, immobile, stunned.</p>
<p>     “I’m sorry about the hotel room, too. I treated you the way misogynistic alphas treat their omegas, like they’re weak, and you’re everything but.” Harry went on. He swept his thumb over Louis’ knuckles. “And—I’m sorry for kissing you. Last week. I was drunk, but...” he shrugged jerkily. “That’s not how I wanted the first one to be.”</p>
<p>     Their knees bumped beneath the thin sheet. Harry’s skin was soft and shower-hot.</p>
<p>     “Kiss me.”</p>
<p>     Harry’s neck cracked as his head twisted to stare.</p>
<p>     Louis stared back. “If you want to.” He went on, cheeks warming. God, did he want Harry to kiss him. “I can’t fix the first one, but we can... we can fix all the ones that come after. Kiss me.”</p>
<p>     Harry gnawed on his lower lip, red-rimmed eyes trained on Louis’ mouth. “Are you sure?” He rasps, and Louis’ skin heats at the <em> ruin </em> in his voice. Ruin from just the prospect of kissing Louis.</p>
<p>     “Harry.” Louis chuckled, smoothing away strands of hair that had pasted themselves to his brow. His palm cradled Harry’s cheek. “Just kiss me.”</p>
<p>     <em> Give me this. </em></p>
<p>
  <em>      Give us this. </em>
</p>
<p><em>      Please, Harry</em>. He prays. <em> I need this</em>.</p>
<p>     Harry takes his face between his hands and presses their mouths together.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis thought he’d know what kissing Harry felt like. He thought he <em> did </em>, after the night in his hotel room.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He didn’t know anything.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry kisses like Louis is made of stardust, and he’s going to combust if they stop. Like Louis is a meal and he’s starving. Like it’s all he’s ever wanted to do, and he’s not entirely sure he isn’t dreaming.</p>
<p>     <em> Louis </em> isn’t entirely sure he isn’t dreaming.</p>
<p>     Harry cradles his face firmly, hotly, surging up to hold their bodies together. He licks over Louis’ bottom lip, makes a low sound when their tongues brush, pheromones rolling off him in waves. His skin seems to rise in heat beneath Louis’ hands. It’s dizzying, the spark between their mouths, the unparalleled want that darts across every synapse, every cell in Louis’ blood. He squeezes his eyes shut when the walls start to tilt, and Harry’s fingertips drive into the softness of his hips.</p>
<p>     He’s never needed someone like this.</p>
<p>     They kiss until their lips are bruised and swollen and Louis can feel his racing heartbeat from his ears to his toes. He tosses a leg over Harry’s thigh, yanking him close. Harry takes one look at his spit-slick mouth and they’re kissing again.</p>
<p>     <em> Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, </em> Louis’ mind cries, a consistent cycle of desire. His hips twitch forward desperately, but it only makes Harry hold them tighter, rumbling a deafeningly low growl that vibrates against Louis’ chest. Knocks inside his ribs.</p>
<p>     “We have to talk about things,” Louis tears his mouth away, panting, nails scraping along the back of Harry’s neck.</p>
<p>     “<em>Omega</em>,” Harry whispers, half a plead, half a desperate whine, and Louis surges forward to kiss him again.</p>
<p>     Harry mouths down his neck and Louis tips his head back. “Eventually—shit—eventually,” he begins, panting breathlessly. His lungs hurt. “We actually <em> do </em> have to talk.”</p>
<p>     “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Harry agrees, mouth against Louis’ pulse. His drags his tongue across it, and then his teeth. “Of course, baby.”</p>
<p>     Louis moans. He’s never been this hard in his life.</p>
<p>     “We’re not having sex today.”</p>
<p>     Louis goes still.</p>
<p>     Harry’s staring up at him, pale eyes swallowed by dark arousal, red lips bitten and parted. He breathes shortly through them.</p>
<p>     “What?” Louis whispered, feeling his stomach heat as Harry’s hands splayed across his sides.</p>
<p>     Harry’s nose nudged at his cheek. It was cold, and it made Louis giggle. “We’re not having sex today.” Harry repeats, and something in Louis’ chest tips it’s head back and snarls. It takes a moment for him to realize it’s his omega. “We haven’t even defined our relationship.”</p>
<p>     “Will you be my boyfriend?” Louis gripped at his shoulders. “Will you be my alpha? Do you want to get married one day?”</p>
<p>     “Yes to all of those things.” Harry grinned and peppered kisses across Louis’ cheeks.</p>
<p>     “Relationship defined.” Louis said, bordering on a whimper. “We can fuck now, right?”</p>
<p>     Harry snorted ungracefully and squeezed Louis’ cheeks between his hands, until his lips puckered. “No. We’re gonna go on a date first. We have two more concerts until tour ends, and then we’ll be back in London and I can take you for dinner at the Ivy. Then, if you want, we can sleep together.”</p>
<p>     “Or,” Louis frowned. “And consider this, because I think you’ll like it. We can fuck right now, and several more times before we go back home, and then go for dinner at the Ivy, and then fuck again when we’re at the flat. Christen every room, that sort of idea.”</p>
<p>     “Stop calling it fucking.” Harry pouted.</p>
<p>     Louis pulled a face, brows pulling together, except it didn’t really work, because he couldn’t stop grinning. “What do you want me to call it? Doing laundry?”</p>
<p>    “No. It’s...” he floundered. “It’s <em> making love, </em> Louis. It’s magical and romantic.” Harry dipped down to scent him. “It’s better than fucking.”</p>
<p>     Louis shifted and made as if to climb off his lap. “I’m breaking up with you.”</p>
<p>     But Harry clung to his hips, giggling, and listed forward to kiss him again. “Give me one date.” He pleaded against Louis’ mouth. “One date, and then you can jump me all you want. Fair?” He grinned.</p>
<p>     Louis huffed. Definitely not fair.</p>
<p>     He kissed Harry again.</p>
<p>     “Fair.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The day of their reservation, Louis wakes up with a fever.</p>
<p>     “It’s my post-tour crash.” Louis hisses into the phone, voice thick with sickness. “Harry’s gonna be so upset.”</p>
<p>     “<em>You </em> sound so upset.” Niall says, voice crackling through the receiver.</p>
<p>     Louis whined and glanced towards the closed bathroom door. He could hear the shower water hitting the tiles through the wood. “I <em> am </em> upset, Niall! I’m si—“ he coughed harshly, throat burning. “I’m sick on the day of our first date, and I’m not gonna be able to go, and Harry’s gonna break up with me.”</p>
<p>     “Tough shit he is.” Niall huffed. Louis could hear his eyes roll through the phone. “He would never break up with you, even if you accidentally got pregnant.”</p>
<p>     Louis’ jaw dropped. “Thanks for jinxing that, Niall, you stupid—“</p>
<p>     “Good talk.” Niall laughed. At Louis’ frustrated whine, he sighed, voice softening. “Stop freaking out. Honestly, Harry’s gonna be over the moon that he gets to take care of you for the next few days. So just, like, relax.”</p>
<p>     Louis mumbled something unintelligible to even his own ears and swung out of bed, pinning the phone between his shoulder and his ear. His throat ached for a cuppa, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he could hear the water shut off.</p>
<p>     “I can’t relax.” He muttered, padding into the kitchen. “I’m ruining our first date.”</p>
<p>     “You’ve been on thousands of dates.”</p>
<p>     “Not real ones.” He pouted. “This one was special. He’s my boyfriend now.”</p>
<p>     “I know.” Niall laughed. In the background, a footie game played tinnily, and someone was cheering. “It’s all you’ve been talking about.”</p>
<p>     Louis tossed his used tea bag into the trash and sighed. “I guess. I’ll call you later, I have to go pass out in bed.”</p>
<p>     “Okay, Loubear. Feel better.”</p>
<p>     “Thanks, Nialler.”</p>
<p>     He ended the call and weaved through the flat, stopping in the doorway of the bedroom with his mug cradled in both hands. Harry was stretched across the bed, donning only black boxers, phone resting on his chest and wet hair plastered to his forehead. He took one look at Louis, red-nosed and dark-eyed, and started chuckling sweetly.</p>
<p>     Louis pouted. “I’m sick.” He rasped.</p>
<p>     He rubbed at his eyes, pajama pants billowing hugely around his legs, and sneezed softly.</p>
<p>     Harry opens his arms. “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met.”</p>
<p>     Louis set his mug on the bedside table and fell into Harry’s open embrace, tucking his face into the warmth of his neck and sighing. Harry scented him lovingly. “I’m sorry I fucked up our date.” He whispered. His lips scraped across Harry’s jugular.</p>
<p>     “Don’t even start.” Harry took Louis’ face between both his hands and tipped his head up, kissing him softly. “I get to take care of my pretty baby until he feels better, and then we get to go on the most perfect date ever and <em> then, </em>after that, spend all of eternity together for the rest of our lives.” He dropped kisses along Louis’ face, across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, against his fluttered-shut eyelids. His lips were soft and warm.</p>
<p>     A smile twitched at Louis’ mouth. “You’re very committed.”</p>
<p>     Harry grinned. “Extremely, doll.” He pulled Louis closer. “Extremely.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis’ under the weather for three days. Harry’s sick for the next four. Louis’d warned him to stop getting so close, to stop eating the soup that Louis couldn’t finish, and for the love of God, <em> stop kissing him</em>, but there was no getting through.</p>
<p>     <em> The heart wants what it wants</em>, Harry would say, anytime Louis began a stuffy-nosed spiel. <em> And mine wants you. In sickness or in health.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis has a fever dream about them getting married. Niall is the officiant. Harry carries him out, bridal style, and he’s grinning so wide that Louis can’t look straight at him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You should wear a suit.” Zayn rifled through his closet. “I bet Harry’s gonna wear a suit.”</p>
<p>     Louis spun. He’d practically chewed through his lower lip, and clothes were strewn wildly about his bedroom floor. His hair hung damp around his face, yet to see a blow dryer or any sort of gel today. He was a <em> mess</em>.</p>
<p>     “I don’t <em> have </em> a nice suit.” He said frantically, waving his hands and, subsequently, the shirt balled up in them. “We can’t go out if I’m dressed for a casual restaurant date and he’s wearing his suit from the AMA’s last year!”</p>
<p>     Zayn made a face and tugged open a drawer of the dresser. “He wouldn’t wear that again after you told him the fabric was scratchy.” He slid it closed and opened the next one. “You’ve really got no clothes. I can’t find shit in here.”</p>
<p>     “Considering you’re rooting around in my <em> knickers </em> drawer.” Louis rolled his eyes and tossed a pair of jeans into the haphazard <em> no </em> pile.</p>
<p>     Zayn chucked a pair of red satin panties at his head. “Fuck off.” He snorted, and then raised a thin, lacy piece of fabric in his hand, laughing. “This is the fanciest garter belt I’ve ever seen, Louis. Jesus.”</p>
<p>     He was still inspecting it, half-amused and half-impressed, when Louis threw yet another pair of trousers into the reject pile. “The stockings that went along with them have a run, so I can’t wear it until I get a new pair.”</p>
<p>     “Are you wearing pants or knickers tonight?” Zayn asked, setting the garter belt back down. He rubbed his thumb over the material of a sheer, flowery robe. It was Louis’ favorite. “Because we have to take that into account with your clothing choices, as well.”</p>
<p>     Louis flopped on the messy mountain of unsorted clothes on his bed and screamed into them.</p>
<p>     He turned on his side. Zayn was watching him, unimpressed, one brow cocked high on his forehead. “I’m gonna cancel.” Louis moaned.</p>
<p>     “Like fucking hell you are.” Zayn rifled through the drawer, pulled out a pair of white cotton panties with a pink rose on the front, and tossed them blindly in Louis’ direction. “There. Wear those with some casual dress pants and a button-up. Bring a jacket to go along but leave it in the car if Harry’s not all white tie. You can leave the top buttons unbuttoned.”</p>
<p>     “What color button-up?” Louis mumbled, trying desperately not to show how much Zayn was saving his arse.</p>
<p>     “Burgundy.” Zayn said, as if it were obvious. He pulled a wine-colored dress shirt from the shelves of the closet, and Louis didn’t even remember owning it. “It’ll look great. You should wear suspenders.”</p>
<p>     Louis sat up on the bed and glared.</p>
<p>     “I am <em> not </em> wearing suspenders.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was the best bad date Louis had ever been on.</p>
<p>     Harry closed the door on his own sleeve and ripped it. Louis had stepped in a puddle. Harry hit his head on the doorframe walking in. Louis spilled champagne all over the tabletop, and then shattered the glass. They stepped on each other’s feet under the table. Harry banged his knee against the metal leg. Louis hated whatever it was he ordered, so he ate off Harry’s plate, and Harry kept chiding him for trying to steal his peas.</p>
<p>     They didn’t once stop laughing.</p>
<p>     People stared at them, they were laughing so hard, but it wasn’t a <em> what are these young delinquents doing </em> in this posh restaurant sort of stare. It was a <em> they’re so in love I can’t look away </em> one. People smiled at their antics. The couple a table over could barely stifle their giggles when Harry laughed so hard that champagne shot out of his nose.</p>
<p>     Louis had never been this happy in his life.</p>
<p>     “Oh, whatever!” Harry laughed, waving Louis off from whichever tangent they were on now. “You have a bum like a girl’s, you can’t talk about my arse.”</p>
<p>     “I’m just saying, it wouldn’t kill you to do some more squats.” Louis snorted, red-faced and breathless, into his glass. He was giggling so much he almost couldn’t swallow his drink.</p>
<p>     Harry grinned at him over the rim of his champagne flute. “You’re <em> such </em> a brat.”</p>
<p>     “You’re stuck with me.” Louis shot back, scrunching his nose up.</p>
<p>     Harry grinned. He took Louis’ hand, kissed it softly. “Thank god for that.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You taste like cherries.”</p>
<p>     Louis kicked the door closed, clinging desperately to Harry’s shoulders, panting against his mouth. “It’s my chapstick.” He rasped. Even to his own ears, his voice was ruined.</p>
<p>     Harry’s tongue dipped between his lips. “Yum.”</p>
<p>     Louis was on fire.</p>
<p>     Harry’s mouth tasted the way he smelled, like pine and fire and a hint of deep fried haddock and chips. His hands gripped tight to Louis’ body; any place he could reach, he touched, grappling at his hips, his thighs, his arms, his face. His palms were hot. A fire churns deep in Louis’ belly, hotter with every place their skin presses together, every place Harry makes them fit, like jigsaw pieces. His lips already ache with the intensity at which they drive into Harry’s, but he doesn’t care, and he won’t start. Slick wet his pants.</p>
<p>     Harry tipped his head back and groaned at the scent, eyes fluttering shut. Louis dove forward to bite and lick at his neck. He’s never wanted so thoroughly, so entirely.</p>
<p>     Louis’ teeth drove into his scent gland.</p>
<p>     “Fuck me.”</p>
<p>     Harry heaved him up by the thighs and pinned him against the cold, hard wood. His grin was maniacal, devilish. Wild. “Yeah?” He pushed him harder against the door. “S’that just what you want, Omega? S’what you’re aching for?”</p>
<p>     Louis’ head banged against the slats as it tipped back. “<em>Yes</em>.”</p>
<p>     It was all his hot, heady mind had devolved to. <em> Yesyesyesyes </em>, looping, playing on a dizzying track inside his reeling head. He wants and he wants and he tries to fit all of his emotion in the stringent confines of his body but he’s failing. It buzzes out of him, vibrates through his skin. He’s drowning in it.</p>
<p>     Slick soaked the back of his trousers. He needs a cigarette.</p>
<p>     “<em>Harry</em>,”</p>
<p>     “I’ve got you, baby,” Harry licked down his neck, across his pulse, teething at his scent gland and his sharp collarbones. He rutted his hips forward against Louis’ slick-wet bum. “Hmm? Don’t I have you?” He drove his canines into the side of Louis’ neck.</p>
<p>     “<em>Oh</em>!” Louis gasped. Harry did it once more, just beside the first bite. “Hurts, Harry,” he whined.</p>
<p>     Harry spoke against his wet skin. “I think you like when it hurts a bit, don’t you, Lou.” He rasped. Electricity sparked up Louis’ pliant spine. “Tell me out loud, doll, I need your voice for this one.”</p>
<p>     “I like—“ the words stall in his throat, faulty and steaming. “Like when it hurts. I do. Just—please, Hazza, <em> please</em>.”</p>
<p>     Harry dipped forward to kiss him. Lifted him off the wall. Walked them towards his bedroom.</p>
<p>     “Okay, baby. Okay.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The mattress is soft and sinks beneath the weight of their bodies, twisted together, legs and legs and arms and hands and mouths. Harry hovered above him, balanced on his elbows, face tipped down to kiss at Louis’ lips, to suck at his tongue, lick over his teeth. They’d been kissing for a long time. Where Louis had thought everything would be fast, sharp, blurry, they’d passed the threshold to Harry’s bedroom and the world had twisted into something heat-hazy and dumb, slow and sweet like strawberries in chocolate. Maybe it’s better this way.</p>
<p>     Harry’s breath skidded across his wet lips. It’s better this way. Just the two of them, cocooned in this bed that built them, that kept them warm while love blossomed silently beneath their diaphragm and wound it’s vines through their lungs. Isolated.</p>
<p>     “Harry.” Louis gasped against his mouth, hands wrapping around his corded forearms. He tipped his hips up, slick gushing against his boxers, heart thrumming inside his chest. “<em>Harry.</em>”</p>
<p>     Harry’s lips scraped the hollow of his cheek. “Yes, my love?”</p>
<p>     “<em>Ah</em>.” He whined, grabbing Harry’s hand and sliding it down his chest, until it cupped his aching cock through his trousers. “Fuck me, please, God, please—“</p>
<p>     Harry nipped at his lip. “Ask nicely, baby.” He grinned, devilish, lovely. “The way I like.”</p>
<p>     Louis’ heart thrummed like the overworked wings of a bird.</p>
<p>     “Make love to me, Alpha.”</p>
<p>     Harry’s eyes slipped shut, for just a moment, in incredulous bliss. As if he’s been waiting lifetimes for this moment. Maybe he has. The same feeling bleeds beneath Louis’ skin, slick and hot and euphoric.</p>
<p>     Louis reached up to cradle Harry’s face. Something unbelievably soft twisted and built between them, warm and sweet and gentle. Like a cloud of sparking adoration.</p>
<p>     Then, Harry’s eyes fluttered open.</p>
<p>     Louis’ glittering heart thumped once. Harsh. Then, it fell still.</p>
<p>     Harry was hungry.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Put your hands above your head.” Harry whispered, teeth scraping at Louis’ throat, fingers dancing along the hem of his shirt where it had come undone from his trousers. He flicked a button open and sucked a mark beneath his Adam’s apple.</p>
<p>     Louis couldn’t breathe as he crossed his wrists against the pillow, chest rising and falling frantically, face tipped back, mouth fallen open, hips undulating desperately against the mattress. Slick had soaked through his trousers and was puddling into the sheets, but Harry just inhaled and grinned an unhinged, seductive grin. Louis wasn’t sure how many times he’d imagined this; thought it, dreamed it, pleaded for it. None of it compares to <em> having </em> it, to it being in his grasp, in his hands. He feels like he’s going to shake out of his skin, like he’s coming apart at the seams but it’s <em> okay </em> because Harry knows how to hold him together, to patch him up neater than before.</p>
<p>     “Harry,” he sobbed, when Harry tore through the rest of his buttons, sent them flying. And then, “<em>Alpha</em>.”</p>
<p>     “You sound beautiful, baby.” Harry praised sweetly, rolling his hips against Louis’. Just once. When Louis arched for them again, searching for the touch, Harry pinned him down with one strong, massive hand. “You’re so sexy, you know that? So lovely. Love the way you look.” He bit at Louis’ nipple, sharp and sudden, humming when Louis tossed his head back and keened. His hands were still stationary above his head, as if pinned by some weight, by the force of Harry’s demands and the pull to comply. “Love the sounds you make.”</p>
<p>     He kisses up and down Louis’ chest, leaves bruises, sucks marks in the shape of a heart atop the hollow of his hip bone. When Louis glances down at it, he nearly cries. Except, Harry’s got a hand on his zipper and he’s tearing his trousers open and yanking them down and—oh.</p>
<p>     <em> Oh</em>.</p>
<p>     Louis watches his mouth form the word.</p>
<p>     His green eyes go black as they absorb the sight of Louis’ panties, wet with precome, tented around his twitching cock. Between his thighs, the gray sheets are nearly black with slick. Harry rumbles with a growl, so Louis bares his throat.</p>
<p>     “These for me?” Harry purred, running his blunt nails along the waistband, hooking a fingertip beneath the elastic and letting it snap back against Louis’ skin. He speaks through the moan it produces: “So pretty, baby. So very pretty, all for me, my... how do we feel about princess?”</p>
<p>     “<em>Yes</em>!” Louis’ voice was raw and throaty. The sound of it alarmed him, alien and staccato, but, God, how could he even care. Harry thumbed the head of his cock through the cotton.</p>
<p>     “Pretty princess.” Harry whispers. When Louis glances down, he catches the twitch of Harry’s cock even through his trousers. Why is he still dressed? “Princess in her panties, getting so wet and warm for me. Maybe I should fuck you without prep,” he reached around to press the pad of his finger against Louis’ leaking hole, grinning when Louis thrashed and cried out. “Already so ready for me.” A grin. “But, no. Think I want to play with you first.” He glances up. Catches Louis’ chin between his fingers, drags him back from that spacey plain he’d been barreling towards. “That sound good, Omega?”</p>
<p>     Louis nodded. “Sounds good, sounds so good,” he whined, sinking into the mattress as Harry hooks fingers underneath his panties and scrapes those down his thighs, too. Where Louis is bare and writhing, Harry is still fully clothed, and there’s something feral in that, something that makes Louis feel small and warm and safe.</p>
<p>     He’s not sure where it all comes from, with Harry. He never has been. It’s just this <em> thing,</em> always feeling safe, always feeling held close and protected like a baby in a swaddle. The safety makes him want things, things maybe he shouldn’t want but he does anyway, things that twist his stomach into knots and makes his skin tingle around his bones. Things like pain, shocking him back to life, like hurt. He used to think it made him sick, but now it just makes him want more, more, more of Harry, each night and morning. He collects these things, has been collecting them, storing them inside his chest. When Harry cracks him open, he can see.</p>
<p>     His arms stay pinned above his head. They will until Harry tells him to move.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry’s head dipped and shook between Louis’ legs, tongue darting against his skin, pushing into him. Louis screamed at the feeling, at the wet pleasure of it, squirming and whining against the bed. Slick drips off Harry’s chin and paints constellations on their sheets. At some point, Harry told Louis to grip his head, to move him the way Louis’ needed to move him, and Louis didn’t waste a moment, sinking his hands into the curls they’d grown to miss and pressing him deeper, deeper, deeper into his arse, noises growing higher with each swipe of his tongue. His hair feels likes silk between Louis’ fingertips, where the skin is soft and nearly untouched. It’s magical.</p>
<p>     He’s going to come. <em> He’s going to come.</em></p>
<p>     “<em>Harry</em>!” He cried, sickeningly high-pitched and desperate. His fingers tightened in Harry’s curls, tugging harshly, voice breaking. The ball of lava in his gut churned, building, tightening, on the precipice of shattering to pieces. “Harry, <em> Ha-rry—”</em></p>
<p>     Harry pulls away.</p>
<p>     He smiles when Louis cries out, reaching up to kiss him softly, like an apology. His lips taste of slick and sex and Louis’ almost crying, mourning the loss of the release that had bit at his fingertips.</p>
<p>     “Hush, my love,” Harry murmurs, so delicate, so sweet, he cupped Louis’ cheeks and pressed kisses to his wet eyelids. “I’ve got you, baby, my baby, I’m here.”</p>
<p>     Louis grappled at his shoulders, at his forearms, still restrained in his wrinkled dress shirt. His eyes were wild, and, staring into them, he could see the spark of alarm dart through Harry’s gaze.</p>
<p>     “<em>Please</em>.” Louis breathed, ragged. He squirmed atop the bed.</p>
<p>     And then, again.</p>
<p>     “<em>Please</em>.”</p>
<p>     Watching Harry undress, drinking and inhaling each spark of skin that’s revealed, Louis’ heart falls still in his chest. It’s like staring at art, this honey colored skin and slope of smooth muscles—it <em> is </em> staring at art. Harry is pure artistry, painted in amber in gold, a myriad of masterpieces contained in one body. Louis can’t look at him directly.</p>
<p>     It’s slow, again, when Harry lays naked across Louis’ body, hot skin against hot skin. He cradles Louis’ head, thumbs away his stray tears and tips down to kiss him. Their mouths moved lazily.</p>
<p>     Harry’s palms along the backs of Louis’ thighs. Hikes them up around his waist. His stomach twists in anticipation, and he can feel Harry’s hot head, nudging against his hole, twitching with every hitch and moan of Louis’ breath.</p>
<p>     “Please, Harry,” Louis murmured against his mouth, ankles locking in the small of his back. “Please, my love, my Alpha, please.”</p>
<p>     Harry tipped down to kiss him and pushed forward.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s nothing in the whole world like having Harry inside him. Louis decides that in milliseconds.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He loves Harry. God, does he love him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Oh my god,” Louis rasped, with tears wet on his cheeks. He holds tight to Harry’s hands, his shoulders, his waist, grasping desperately as if Harry might slip away from his palms like sand. Neither of them move. Neither breathe. Harry’s eyes are shut. “Oh my god. Harry.”</p>
<p>     Harry opens his mouth as if to speak, but all that escapes is a shuddering, crackling breath, rife with tears and overwhelming content.</p>
<p>     If Louis were a compass, Harry is North.</p>
<p>     His chest is breaking apart. Remolding itself to fit Harry between his ribs. Within his lungs.</p>
<p>     His heart beats, swollen and overworked.</p>
<p>     “Harry.” He gasps, again, as Harry presses close, close, closer, face against Louis’ shoulder, bodies aligned. He pulls out, just slightly, and pushes back in. Louis throws his arms around Harry’s shoulders, hot palms flattening between his shoulder blades, and holds him. This is where he’s meant to be.</p>
<p>     The twine and move and shift like they were programmed to. Their bodies writhe and dance together, limbs tangled and skin slick with sweat, panting into each other’s mouths, too dizzy with desire to kiss properly. There’s no feeling like this. There’s nothing in the world that exists  outside of their interlaced bodies. There’s nothing more than them.</p>
<p>     “Harry, Harry, Harry,” Louis whispers against Harry’s cheek, clinging desperately to him as Harry presses into him, again and again and again. His hands are tight on Louis’ hips, pulling him down for each thrust, bringing them together just on the line between sweet and rough. Passionate. Louis hopes bruises will form by morning.</p>
<p>     It builds and builds and builds until they’re falling apart at the joint seams, reduced to no more than cries and primal thrusts of want, desire, need. “Harry, Alpha, oh my god, Alpha, <em> please</em>, you feel so—<em>God</em>! God, oh my god, <em> Harry</em>!” Louis cries out, head falling back against his pillow as Harry fucks him up the mattress.</p>
<p>     “Love how you sound,” Harry growled, sucking Louis skin into his mouth, between his teeth. “Love the way my pretty omega needs me. Don’t you? Don’t you need me?”</p>
<p>     “Need you, yes, need you so bad. Need your knot.” Louis whimpered.</p>
<p>     Harry gasped sharply, eyes clenching shut, pressing deep, deep, deep inside Louis’ velvety heat. “<em>Louis.</em>” He ground.</p>
<p>     “Harry!” Louis cried out, tears pouring down his cheeks as Harry ground and swiveled the head of his cock against Louis’ prostate. “Harry, I’m gonna come, please, Harry, I’m gonna come, oh my god—“</p>
<p>     “Come for me, Lou, want it so bad. Come for me, and I’ll knot you, my love—“</p>
<p>     He doesn’t get any further.</p>
<p>     It’s almost painful, the intensity at which the orgasm rips through him, sizzling along his frayed nerve endings, raking through his gelatin muscles and rushing veins. His body contorts and arcs off the mattress. The whole world falls silent save the crash of waves inside Louis’ head, the speed of his blood, the white-blue-pink-orange-yellow explosions in front of his unseeing eyes. All he feels is the flood, the rush of indescribable pleasure racing beneath his skin, a thousand times more intense than anything he’s ever felt in his life. Stars dance and sing at him. Maybe he’s screaming, maybe he’s silent. Maybe he’s crying Harry’s name.</p>
<p>     There’s nothing more than this.</p>
<p>     When his vision clears and only his toes are left numb, Harry is crashing into him. Locking them together on his knot. His face is a mask of pleasure, and his gaze burns where it catches on Louis’. Distantly, vaguely, it feels so, so good, too good in a sharp and overwhelming way, but all Louis can feel in the thrum in his heart. The pleasure and joy and relief and love in Harry’s emerald eyes.</p>
<p>     He knows. He’s always known.</p>
<p>     Harry cradles Louis’ head to his chest when he comes, palms braced wide on either side of his skull, panting into his hair, and Louis just holds him close and murmurs unintelligible things, arms twined around his waist, lips moving over his heart. They lock together as Harry’s cum floods into him, painting his insides white, and Louis thinks he whispers <em> Alpha, Alpha, my love</em>. His tongue isn’t working right.</p>
<p>     Harry’s body finally starts to settle, relaxing against Louis’, strong arms threading around his tiny, sweat-soaked body.</p>
<p>     The first thing he says is: “Louis.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s always known.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Louis looks up, with sex and blurriness still dancing in the corners of his tenerife eyes, and cups Harry’s face in his hands.</p>
<p>     “Marry me.” He breathes. </p>
<p>     Harry’s breath is still shuddering.</p>
<p>     “Mate me and marry me.” Louis whispers. He surges up to press kisses against Harry’s spit-slick mouth. “Please.”</p>
<p>     For a moment, everything was still.</p>
<p>     Harry’s eyes flooded with tears.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The sun is rising above the far horizon, but they’re still awake, twined together, staring into each other’s faces.</p>
<p>     “I never saw myself getting married.” Louis murmurs quietly, after what feels like hours of silence. They’d gone again, somehow, after the whirlwind of proposals and acceptances, and even though Louis’ arse is sore and his eyelids drag heavily, he doesn’t sleep. Couldn’t. He can feel Harry’s dynamic shift at his words, can taste it in the air. Literally. It’s blue with disappointment. “But, I don’t know,” he goes on. “It doesn’t look so bad when I picture it with you.”</p>
<p>     Harry smiled softly. “Yeah?”</p>
<p>     Louis nodded. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>     “Why didn’t you want to get married?” Harry whispered, after more long minutes of contented silence.</p>
<p>      “Scary.” Louis murmured. That’s not a good enough answer, so he goes on. “And, I don’t know,” he plays with his own fingers, voice dwindling. “I thought I’d feel unhappy. It’s just big, you know? I didn’t think I’d be able to find someone who I wanted that with, but, I love you, so,” his chest floods with embarrassment, so visceral it hurts, squeezing around his helpless heart. “I’m not afraid with you, I guess.”</p>
<p>     “Louis.” Harry breathed, voice sickeningly soft, like silk and chiffon. “Louis, Louis, I love you.”</p>
<p>     Tears built in Louis’ eyes.</p>
<p>     “I’m so in love with you, Lou.”</p>
<p>     He buried his face in Harry’s chest.</p>
<p>     “I’m in love with you, too.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Married.” Louis says the next night, when a day of Harry has finally let the idea sink in, feeling the word traverse deftly off his rolling tongue. Harry grins across the pillow. “I’m getting married. You’ll be my husband. Ooh, husband, I love that.” He pursed his lips to the side. “<em>Spouse</em>.”</p>
<p>     Harry twines his arms around Louis’ stomach and grins into his collarbone. “That one’s my favorite.”</p>
<p>     Louis slid his hands into Harry’s unruly hair, feeling the strands between his fingers, soft and tangled. “It sounds like spout.” He observed. His nose dipped to press into Harry’s curls.</p>
<p>     “My spout.” Harry murmured dreamily.</p>
<p>     Louis laughed. “That just sounds like a euphemism for cock.”</p>
<p>     “Oh my god, you’re impossible.”</p>
<p>     “And you’re getting married to my impossible.”</p>
<p>     Harry tipped his face up. His eyes were fond, narrowed in sweet joy, and his mouth was warm when he pressed it to Louis’. “That I am.” He agreed.</p>
<p>     Louis put two fingers beneath his chin and tilted them together, lips pressing together.</p>
<p>     “I love you, Louis Tomlinson.” Harry said into his mouth, eyes fluttering closed. “Do you love me?”</p>
<p>     “Harry Styles.” Louis murmured fondly, pulling away to stroke his thumb across Harry’s cheek. To stare into his face.</p>
<p>     “I’ve always loved you.” He says, and watches Harry’s eyes spark and shimmer. “Don’t you know?”</p>
<p>     Harry just nods.</p>
<p>     He’s always known.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>say hi on tumblr !! https://www.tumblr.com/blog/goodmorninglou<br/>thank you so much for reading !! i love you !!<br/>&lt;333</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>come say hi on tumblr if you enjoyed !! https://www.tumblr.com/blog/goodmorninglou<br/>love you all, thanks for reading !!<br/>&lt;333</p></blockquote></div></div>
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